A few weeks before a new team of teachers was to report to the former Shawnee High School in Louisville, Kentucky, Principal Keith Look discovered the master schedule for the 2010-11 school year to be in total disarray. More than 100 Shawnee students--all of them juniors and seniors--had been enrolled in classes with no connection to the credits…

Privacy, something once taken for granted, has again become top-of-mind for public school districts thanks to technology's increasing reach, as well as new changes to privacy laws governing student information. Recently, educators have had to face important changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), originally signed into…

This Special Report discusses how the Allegheny County Department of Human Services and Pittsburgh Public Schools took a major step toward closing a knowledge gap that prevents schools and human service agencies around the country from developing a deeper understanding of the children in their systems and collaborating on more effective, better…

One of the main intentions of the comprehensive higher education reform in Norway in 2003 was to improve student performance and completion. One way of doing this is to reduce the number of students leaving an institution. Institutions have limited options for reducing student departure, and one of the few routes open to them is changing the…

The purpose of this study was to examine how shyness-sensitivity and unsociability were associated with social, school, and psychological adjustment in rural Chinese children. Participants were third- to fifth-grade students (N = 820; M age = 10 years) in rural schools in P. R. China. Data on shyness-sensitivity, unsociability, and adjustment were…

This study examined the outcomes of 409 students with mental retardation or multiple disabilities from 177 school districts in a Great Lakes state. These students with intellectual disabilities were interviewed at exit and 1 year following graduation. The authors developed and tested three regression models--two to predict full-time employment and…

In this article we examine how social capital affects the creation of human capital. Specifically, we study how college students' peers affect academic performance. Building on existing research, we consider the different types of peers in the academic context and the various mechanisms through which peers affect performance. We test our model…

This research study aimed to identify any correlation between participation in afterschool robotics at the high school level and academic performance. Through a sample of N = 121 students, the researcher examined the grades and attendance of students who participated in a robotics program in the 2011-2012 school year. The academic record of these…

This article describes the pedagogical intervention developed in a public school as part of the research "Exploring Communications Practices through Facebook as a Mediatic Device", framed within the computer mediated communications field. Twelve ninth graders' communications practices were explored and addressed by means of multimodal…

This study examined the effect of two family factors (financial, social capital) and school factors on students' achievement. One hundred eighty two, seventh-grade female students from nine schools in Muranga district, Kenya, were studied. The statistical procedures included logit regression, cross-tabulations, frequency counting and chi-square…

In response to the mandates of No Child Left Behind, (NCLB), educators across the country struggle to close the gaps between males and females. Some of the physiological differences existing between the male and female brain suggest support for single-gender instruction, which is on the rise within this country as well as other parts of the world.…

The purpose of this action research project report was to increase reading fluency for 38 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students. The teacher researches collected data from a Parent Survey (n=26), Student Survey (n=38), Teacher Survey (n=12), and Teacher Interviews (n=4) for a total of 80 participants. Data was collected from September 8, 2011…

In this report the authors continue the examination of high school graduation and post-secondary enrollment in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). They consider students enrolled in the MPCP in either 8th or 9th grade in 2006, and a comparison sample of students enrolled in the Milwaukee Public Schools. They find that, as of September…

The participation and performance of students in statewide accountability and assessment systems are measures of student and school success. These accountability systems theoretically reflect performance for all students, including students receiving special education. Yet few examine the participation and performance of students in special…

This study sought to better understand the early integration experiences of college students with disabilities by examining two research questions: (1) How well do the variables in Tinto's (1993) classic model of student attrition predict the early integration experiences of college students with disabilities? and (2) How do students with…