As youth obesity rates remain at unacceptably high levels, particularly across underserved populations, the promotion of physical activity has become a focus of youth obesity prevention across the United States. Thus, the purpose of this study was to develop and test the reliability and validity of a self-reported questionnaire on home, school,…

While many charter school leaders across the country grapple with how to best provide and pay for special education, New Orleans recently became the first city in the nation to tackle special education on the fiscal, human capital, and program fronts in the context of a full-choice public education landscape. Over time, it may offer scalable…

This report (the first in a series of five) explores congressional efforts to mitigate that risk and encourage informed borrowing by enacting statutes related to student loan counseling. After introducing the relevant contemporary policy context, it examines how federal rules governing student loan counseling evolved over time to embrace online…

The purpose of this study was to examine the cognitive predictors of calculations and number line estimation with whole numbers and fractions. At-risk 4th-grade students (N = 139) were assessed on 7 domain-general abilities (i.e., working memory, processing speed, concept formation, language, attentive behavior, and nonverbal reasoning) and…

Mentoring programs that provide guidance and support for disadvantaged youth have expanded rapidly during the past decade in the United States. Research suggests that students with teenage mentors exhibit positive youth development, including enhanced academic self-esteem and connectedness. By contrast, some studies showed that programs that offer…

Quitting in the face of hard work is never the response a teacher wants to see, but it's one that threatens to become more common as academic pressures rise. The new Common Core State Standards, the latest in a decades-long effort to drive educational improvement, soon will be setting unprecedented expectations for the performance of students,…

The Optional Flexible School Day Program (OFSDP) is approved by the Texas Commissioner of Education and is offered by the Houston Independent School District (HISD) to provide students with flexible school hours and days of attendance. The goal of the program is to improve the graduation rates for students who are in danger of dropping out of…

The Pathways to Resilience Project is an ongoing, community-based participatory research (CBPR) project. Its express focus is the exploration of how at-risk youths use formal services and/or informal, naturally occurring resources to beat the odds that have been stacked against them, with the intent of partnering with communities to promote youth…

Representation and justification are two central "mathematical practices". In the past, each has been examined to gain insights in the functions that they have in students' mathematical problem solving. Here, we examine the ways that representation and justification interact and influence the development of one another. We focus on the…

The achievement gap between African American and European American youth is a pervasive problem in the United States. This study explored how achievement values and behavioral engagement affect the academic attainment of an academically at-risk sample of 167 African American youth in late elementary school. Results indicate that achievement values…

Schooling markets prioritize the needs of valued "customers". In Australia, this has resulted in a proliferation of learning interventions aimed at attracting and holding students perceived to fall into this category, and managing those who don't. In this paper, I attempt two main tasks: a description of the large-scale processes…

Gatekeeper training is one of the most commonly employed methods for identifying and intervening with at-risk students (Davidson and Locke, 2010). Within the context of campus suicide prevention, a gatekeeper is broadly defined as any individual who has the potential to come into contact with at-risk students (Davidson and Locke, 2010). Although…

This article advocates for increased attention on the college admission letter to strengthen conditionally admitted students' academic self-efficacy as they begin the college experience. Although first communications are often considered perfunctory, the language of admission materials has strong potential to help at-risk students begin college…

This paper examines "resilience" of mathematics students in transition from a sociocultural perspective, in which resilience is viewed as relational and in particular as a function of the social and cultural capital students may bring to the new field. We draw on two students' stories of transition, in which we recognise elements…

Early number sense is a strong predictor of later success in school mathematics. A disproportionate number of children from low-income families come to first grade with weak number competencies, leaving them at risk for a cycle of failure. The present study examined the effects of an 8-week number sense intervention to develop number competencies…