Increasingly, schools have been adopting comprehensive, three-tiered response to intervention (RTI) systems to support students in both academics and social behavior. But with each new systems change initiative comes separate teams, data, and training and coaching systems. Given the intensity of resources required to implement and sustain such…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of self-evaluative standards and graphed feedback on calibration accuracy and performance in mathematics. Specifically, we explored the influence of mastery learning standards as opposed to social comparison standards as well as of individual feedback as opposed to social comparison feedback. 90…

In the United States, interest in early childhood development has grown dramatically over the past two decades and continues to expand. Increasing public support for programs and services that address the needs of young children and their families provides numerous opportunities for social work intervention. This article describes three major…

Inner-city public school classrooms, group homes, juvenile detention centers and facilities will be with Americans forever. Their populations can deflate, challenge, or improve any artist's skills and expertise. The author thinks of teaching artists who work these strenuous communities as soldiers of service, dedicated individuals who fight with…

Research Findings: Fostering the social competence of at-risk preschoolers would be facilitated by knowing which of children's emotion skills are most salient to social outcomes. We examined the emotion skills and social competence of 44 children enrolled in a Head Start program. Emotion skills were examined in terms of children's emotional…

Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether US female adolescents who self-reported having a physical disability or long-term health problem were more likely to report having been physically forced to have sexual intercourse than US female adolescents without a physical disability or long-term health problem. Methods: Using…

In high school students get tied up in extracurricular activities and have little time for pleasure reading. It is true that with rigorous academic schedules they have little time for pleasure reading. Thus began a conversation with a sophomore English teacher at the author's high school. As they were discussing the plight of free reading he was…

The purposes of this study were (a) to identify measures that when added to a base 1st-grade screening battery help eliminate false positives and (b) to investigate gains in efficiency associated with a 2-stage gated screening procedure. We tested 355 children in the fall of 1st grade and assessed for reading difficulty at the end of 2nd grade.…

For a number of students, early failure is highly predictive of later failure, severely limiting the development of skilled reading. Students who do not read fluently generally do not become good readers. In addition, students with inadequate fluency are likely to avoid reading because of fear of failure and negative attitudes--and students who…

Federal legislation has prescribed the increased use of statewide achievement tests as the culmination of a student's knowledge and ability at the end of a grade level; however, schools need to be able to predict those who are at-risk of performing poorly on these high-stakes tests. Three studies served to identify a means of predicting statewide…

Research has shown that low graduation rates are a problem in high schools across the United States. The problem is significant at a small, inner-city charter high school in a southwestern US state that had a 2008 graduation rate of 34%. After assessing the situation, educators at this school developed the Credit Retrieval Program (CRP) to help…

Disparities in student achievement, engagement and retention have historically existed between technology-rich schools with more affluent students and schools with less access to technology and less-privileged students. This study explores how a community-based change initiative was used to enhance the access and use of technology in a high…

In a major address on educational policy last March, President Barack Obama underscored his priorities for the pending reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. He promised that the government will spur a race to the top by encouraging better standards and assessments. But Obama's concerns over rigor and the promise of the Common…

Introduction: Although the family day care workforce has changed over the past decade in response to evolving childcare regulations and accreditation requirements, there is little research on family day care educators in Australia. The aim of this study was to describe characteristics of Australian family day care educators, including their…

What can teachers learn from their struggling students? The authors of this article interviewed 46 teachers who were themselves struggling students to learn how their experiences as students affected their practices as teachers. Several common themes emerged. Among them were the need to develop relationships with students, the importance of…