The purpose of this quantitative study, funded by the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) through Just Read, Florida!, was to investigate the use of Tune in[TM] to Reading, an innovative reading intervention, with struggling adolescent readers in the juvenile justice system. One hundred and three students who exhibited issues ranging from…

The study presented here is the first large scale effort on a national level to examine the relationship between K-8 Elemiddle Schools and 6-8 Middle Schools. From a population of more than 2,000 middle grades schools in 49 public school districts across 26 states, a sample of 542 Elemiddle and 506 Middle Schools was drawn. Both regression and…

This paper reports on a project which investigates the impact of systemic environmental education (EE) programs on student achievement on EE-based integrated tests and standardized tests in math, language arts, and listening. Systemic environmental education programs are defined by curriculum designed to align and integrate subjects around real…

Relations among a set of cognitive-motivational variables were examined with the intent being to assess and clarify the nature of their interconnections within a middle school sample. Student perception of hope, which includes perceptions of agency and pathways, was investigated, along with personal achievement goal orientation, as predictors of…

The purpose of this study was to explore and interpret students' perspectives of their experiences in four urban middle school physical education programs. Focus group interviews with 76 students were supported by field notes and researchers' reflective journals. Researchers used constant comparison methods (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) to identify seven…

The authors of this study document one middle school classroom in an attempt to understand how inquiry learning, supported with technological tools, can provide students with opportunities to develop ownership of science content knowledge. Case study and collaborative teacher researcher methods were utilized to document the implementation of a…

This study used a national validity project to investigate specific research questions regarding the intersections among aspects of validity, educational measurement, and cognitive theory. Validity evidence was collected through traditional paper and pencil tests, surveys, think-alouds, and exit interviews of fifth and sixth grade students, as…

Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), path analytic procedures were performed to test a model of the effects of parent and peer encouragement to take algebra on the mathematics achievement of eighth grade students. The effects of socio-economic status (SES) on middle school algebra course-taking and…

Institutions of teacher education face a challenge of preparing teachers with the capacity to provide high-quality instruction to the increasingly diverse student populations in our nation's schools. In an effort to better prepare a our middle level preservice students to teach in diverse settings, we engaged in a case study of one group of…

Young adolescents experience many cognitive, physical, and emotional changes during their middle school years; however, the middle school literature suggests that structural reforms supporting the emotional and social needs of young adolescents are implemented far more readily than the instructional reforms necessary for addressing young…

This study presents the development and basic psychometric characteristics of the "School Safety and Security Questionnaire" (SSSQ). This new measure was constructed to assess middle grade students' perceptions of safety and security during the school year. The content validity of the theoretically-based instrument was assessed and the measure was…

One of the essential principles for improving middle grade education is to establish a safe and healthy school environment (Jackson & Davis, 2000; Price & Waxman, 2005). The overall quality of the school climate or school environment has been argued to be one of the central problems of urban schools (Waxman & Huang, 1997). Several studies, for…

This project examines the effects of Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models on the achievement of students in Kentucky middle schools. Previous studies exploring the effects of CSR on schools and student achievement have rendered mixed results (Berends, 2000; May & Supovitz, 2006; May, Supovitz, & Perda, 2004; RAND, 2002; Zhang, Shkolnik, &…

African American youth are characterized as experiencing declining academic motivation and engagement while simultaneously maintaining optimism for their future success. Thus, researchers hypothesize academic motivation to be a negative factor for educational aspirations when applied to an urban sample of African American middle school students (N…

This article describes how scholarship from the New Literacy Studies can shed "more light" (Florio-Ruane, 2002) on middle school education and youth literacies, allowing users to examine claims about students, schools, policy, and research. Hypothesizing that shortcomings in early adolescent literacy education have less to do with lack of…