The school-aged population in the United States is becoming more culturally and linguistically diverse, while achievement gaps across content areas persist. At the same time, more rigorous academic demands are being placed on all students, including English language learners (ELLs). Teachers of ELLs face the double challenge of promoting English…

The Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2011) outlines core disciplinary ideas, scientific practices and cross-cutting ideas as dimensions on which to base science education. This study outlines the use of core ecological ideas and two scientific practices as a way to examine the cognitive complexity of released large-scale assessment items…

This study was designed to determine eighth grade teachers' perceptions of the impact, quality, and types of job-embedded professional development activities they have participated in and the relationship to student achievement in language arts, math, or science. The researcher identified school districts with 50% or more of their eighth grade…

In this paper we provide the first rigorous evidence of the impact of a partnership between public middle schools and informal science institutions (ISIs), such as museums and zoos, on student outcomes. This study focuses on Urban Advantage (UA), a program in New York City (NYC) that explicitly draws upon the expertise and resources of the city's…

The achievement gap between economically disadvantaged students and their traditional counterparts has continued to be a problem in education. Based on cognitive constructivist theory and enrichment theory, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between scores on a high-stakes achievement test and participation in a summer…

In this study 7th grade students were observed completing a series of lessons in an online science course to explore their thinking and strategies for using curriculum resources for learning, to explore their thinking and strategies for self-assessing their readiness for lesson assessment, and to explore the relationship between resource use and…

The proposed federal STEM Teacher Pathway program seeks to produce 100,000 new, high-quality math and science teachers in the next decade. How difficult will the goal be to achieve? This report uses data from the ACT® college readiness assessment to examine the feasibility of producing 100,000 high-quality math and science teachers in the next…

The purpose of this evaluation was to measure the impact of the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) Summer Institute on science performance of students whose teachers participated during the summers of 2011 and 2012. Paired t-tests revealed statistically significant increases in a sample of elementary students' Stanford 10 science scores at 3rd…

Fingertip Facts is a compendium of some of the most frequently requested data sets from the Utah State Office of Education. This year's Fingertip Facts includes the following data sets: (1) SAGE Testing; (2) 2018 Utah ACT Scores; (3) CTE Career Pathways; (4) 2018 Public Education General Fund; (5) 2017 Public Enrollment Demographics; (6) Public…

This paper present findings from a pre-service teacher development project that prepared novice teachers to promote English language and literacy development with inquiry-based science through a modified elementary science methods course and professional development for cooperating teachers. To study the project's impact on student learning,…

This study provides a critical look at achievement of African American (AA), and Latino (L) females in third and fifth grades on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) in reading, mathematics and science. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the 2007 and 2011 TAKS raw data. Data analyses indicate that AAL females had the lowest…

The purpose of this study is to identify academically at-risk students in first-semester general chemistry using affective characteristics via cluster analysis. Through the clustering of six preselected affective variables, three distinct affective groups were identified: low (at-risk), medium, and high. Students in the low affective group…

The purpose of the present quasi-experimental study was to examine the impact of a horseshoe crab citizen science program on student achievement and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career motivation with 86 (n = 86) eighth-grade students. The treatment group conducted fieldwork with naturalists and collected data for a…

ACT has been a leader in measuring college and career readiness trends for years. Each August, they release "The Condition of College & Career Readiness" (www.act.org/ newsroom/data/2013), their annual report on the progress of the ACT-tested graduating class relative to college readiness. Nationally, 54.3% of the 2013 graduating…

Council for American Private Education (CAPE) is a coalition of national associations serving private schools K-12. "Outlook" is published monthly by CAPE. This issue contains the following articles: (1) Boehner and Lieberman Introduce D.C. Choice Bill; (2) Research Demonstrates Benefits of School Choice; (3) NAEP [National Assessment …