Effective school reform requires communication with and buy-in from key stakeholders. In recent years, stakeholder surveys have become increasingly prominent tools for promoting better understanding of how school factors contribute to student success. The key purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between Victorian school scores on…

Humans have evolved to follow their intuition, but as any high school physics teacher knows, relying on intuition often leads students to predict outcomes that are at odds with evidence. Over the years, we have attempted to make this intuition-outcome disparity a central theme running throughout our physics classes, with limited success. Part of…

Objective: This study assesses the Adolescent Domain Screening Inventory (ADSI) to identify adolescents at high risk of substance use. Method: The sampling frame consisted of 26,781 surveys, and a secondary analysis was conducted. A random 25% sample was used, leaving 6,661 cases. Binary logistic regressions were run to determine the predictive…

In courses with large enrollment, faculty members sometimes struggle with an understanding of how individual students are engaging in their courses. Information about the level of student engagement that instructors would likely find most useful can be linked to: (1) the learning strategies that students are using; (2) the barriers to learning…

Once students have mastered the mechanics of reading, they are expected to learn new material by reading. This new material, however, becomes increasingly more complex as students enter upper elementary and especially middle and high school. If students fail to comprehend what they read, they risk failure in content courses such as science and…

This study examined the relative contributions of Latino/a children's (N = 102) school readiness and early literacy skills during kindergarten in predicting first grade reading achievement. By using discriminant function analyses, the current study identified a set of areas to assess that could be used to effectively screen children during…

This study investigated an adaptation of the Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) measure of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills into a European context for the Norwegian language, which has a more transparent orthography than English. Second-order latent growth curve modeling was used to examine the longitudinal measurement invariance of…

This report provides a description of the development process, field testing, and psychometric properties of a student mathematics test designed to assess grades K, 1, and 2 student abilities. The test was administered to 4,486 participating grade K, 1, and 2 students in 67 schools located in 10 public school districts in Florida during fall 2015.…

There is a paucity of evidence supporting the use of curriculum-based mathematics measures (M-CBMs) at the middle school level, which makes data-based decisions challenging for school professionals. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among three existing M-CBM indices: (a) basic facts, (b) concepts/application, and (c)…

The socialization of cultural values, ethnic identity, and prosocial behaviors is examined in a sample of 749 Mexican-American adolescents, ages 9-12; M (SD) = 10.42 years (0.55); 49% female, their mothers, and fathers at the 5th, 7th, and 10th grades. Parents' familism values positively predicted their ethnic socialization practices. Mothers'…

Background: Developing and implementing policies to curb and prevent youth tobacco use is of the utmost importance. In Florida, public school districts were authorized to develop tobacco-free school policies through an amendment to the Florida Clean Indoor Air Act in 2011. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of tobacco-free school…

A relatively simple way of measuring institutional effectiveness in relation to degree completion is to estimate the difference between an actual and predicted graduation rate, but the reliability and validity of this method have not been thoroughly examined. Longitudinal data were obtained from IPEDS for both public and private not-for-profit…

This study contributes to the development of a positive framework for effective public schools in 2 ways. First, it advances the construct self-regulatory climate as consisting of 3 generative school norms--collective faculty trust in students, collective student trust in teachers, and student-perceived academic emphasis. The authors argue these…

Objective: Organizational climate has emerged as an important factor in understanding and addressing the complexities of providing services in child welfare. This research examines the psychometric properties of each of the dimensions of Parker and colleagues' Psychological Climate Survey in a sample of voluntary child welfare workers. Methods:…

Background: The potential impact of violent media on children's emotional well-being has been a source of controversy for several decades. To date evidence for a negative impact of violent media on emotional well-being has been mixed and increasingly connected to a "replication crisis" throughout psychological science. Objective: The…