Background: Alternative school settings for students who are identified as "disruptive or dangerous" are playing an increasingly prominent role in the world of public education, yet significant gaps in our understanding of their efficacy remain. Objective: This longitudinal investigation within a large school district serving 100,000…

With nearly a million paraprofessionals working in elementary and secondary schools (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013), ensuring they are well prepared and supported is essential to their and their students' success. Paraprofessionals work closely with classroom teachers to support students from special populations and are typically supervised by…

Assessment and placement practices at community colleges that are used to divide students into college ready, ESL and English remedial tracks play a key role in shaping the academic pathways of students (Hughes & Scott-Clayton, 2011). These assessments are based on assumptions of the nature of bilingualism and student needs and thus have…

This year's "Tennessee Higher Education Fact Book" consists of four sections and an appendix of additional resources and terminology. The four main sections of the report provide data on Student Participation, Student Success, Academic and Fiscal Trends, and Outcomes-Based Funding. Relative to the previous Fact Book, Quality Assurance…

A teacher's effectiveness has a tremendous impact on a child's learning and academic trajectory. Yet knowing that, and being able to create teacher evaluation systems that successfully measure and document teacher effectiveness, are two very different things. In fact, for as long as anyone can remember, a public school teacher's effectiveness and…

Presented at the Advanced Placement Annual Conference (APAC) in Lake Buena Vista, FL in July 2012. This presentation reviews concepts central to achieving equitable AP access and success for all willing and academically prepared students. We analyze trends in participation and performance by race/ethnicity from the AP Report to the Nation and…

Foster parents are often faced with serious externalizing behaviors of their foster child. These behavioral problems may induce family stress and are related to less effective parenting and often increase. Foster children with behavioral problems are also more at risk of placement breakdown. An intervention to support foster parents of young…

With youth unemployment in South Africa hovering around 50 percent and close to half the population living in poverty, a university degree has come to be seen by many as the only way out. And universities are straining under the burden: This admissions cycle, the University of Johannesburg alone rejected more than 70,000 applicants in filling an…

Discussions surrounding assessment in the foreign languages generally focus on the two ends of the teaching/learning process: diagnostic assessment, typically used for placement purposes and administered prior to the start of instruction, and summative assessment, which evaluates learning after instruction for purposes of assigning a grade or…

Having a clear idea of the knowledge in the heritage language that a student brings to the classroom is essential for a successful language-learning experience; for that reason, research in heritage language education has been focusing increasingly on assessment issues, especially language placement exams. Professionals debate whether assessment…

International Baccalaureate (IB) programs are turning up in a diverse mix of school districts, an attempt to add rigor and depth. For rich and for poor, for big schools and small ones, IB has become a way to add rigor and depth to public school curricula. But each school district has adapted IB for its own needs. Some use it in all schools for all…

The objective of this study was to describe the selected conditions for school achievement of students with mild intellectual disabilities from Polish elementary schools. Participants were 605 students with mild disabilities from integrative, regular, and special schools, and their parents (N = 429). It was found that socioeconomic status (SES)…

This study provides national estimates for length of stay in residential care and examines within-group variability along salient predictors. Using data from the National Study on Child and Adolescent Well-Being, the sample included 254 youth with episodes in residential care. Descriptive analyses provided estimates for length of stay over the…

There are some small urban high schools that have high levels of student engagement in science. However, much of the science education research and student teacher placement in urban areas is done in large, somewhat dysfunctional schools. Those who have created these effective environments for science show that it is only in the "whole school…

Children who enter the child welfare system at a young age are at risk for a myriad of developmental, physical, and mental health problems. The risks faced by these vulnerable young children may be exacerbated by placement disruptions during foster care. This study utilizes administrative data from Illinois to explore the potential of child care…