Transitions are a part of life for all students, but particularly for students at Phoenix Charter Academy in Massachusetts. Phoenix students have persevered and shown resilience through challenges in school and in their personal lives that many of us cannot imagine. Students come to Phoenix with a wealth of strengths and assets, from strong work…

Recently, an NPR piece (Rosin, 2019) entitled: "The End of Empathy" discussed the dramatic decrease in empathy over recent decades and how today, a lack of understanding or feeling the plight of another human being is a largely forgotten value. As reviewed in the current study, two types of empathy are affective empathy (sympathy,…

Phoenix Union High School District (PUHSD) has its roots in Territorial Arizona and has served generations of residents as Phoenix evolved from a dusty agricultural town into the fifth-largest city in the nation. For decades, Phoenix Union High School was the lone high school in Phoenix. Desegregation funding makes up approximately 24 percent of…

An account of a persistently failing New York City high school's rapid transformation. Urban Assembly School for Green Careers had a 39% graduation rate in 2013 and ranked in the bottom 1% of high schools citywide. As a transformation strategy, the school employed an innovative educational design known as Learning Cultures, which distributes…

The education landscape, both in and out of school, has shifted dramatically, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to digital learning. This shift has compounded the need for digital media literacy, a wide-ranging and often-changing concept that encompasses the competence to use technical equipment, intelligently consume and process information, and…

Problem-based learning via virtual exchange affords opportunities for students to learn biology while developing abilities to learn about and work with diverse others. We describe an activity using these methods, with goals for students to develop useful cell structure analogies, analyze how analogies are not perfect representations of target…

"Transcendentalism" refers to philosophical, religious, and literary beliefs held by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, and other writers in New England during the 1830s and 1840s. Emerson believed in the significance of one's intuition and individuality. He expresses these beliefs in his…

In spring 2017, the National College Access Network's (NCAN's) annual Spring Training series focused on connecting career success with NCAN members' college access and success services. Across four cities (Phoenix, Houston, Indianapolis and Providence), attendees learned from field experts on a variety of topics, from integrating career success…

Public participation in local decision-making processes has numerous purported benefits. Yet, realizing these benefits requires a citizenry that is able and willing to participate in meaningful ways. High schools are ideal venues for civic education but rarely teach local collective action, citizen engagement, and self-governance, focusing instead…

School safety is a wicked problem due to shifting needs and available information, the diverse actors affected and involved, fluctuating budgetary demands and ramifications, and relations to broader social and political issues. School safety challenges encompass a range of factors, including threats of violence and fears related to school…

When Patricia Ross' high school students at the Phoenix Day School for the Deaf buddied up with elementary school students to improve their reading skills, amazing things happened. As they read to them, Ross' students, who were part of the 2012-2013 Integrated Language Arts and Social Studies program, increased their reading scores and forged…

Two schools in Michigan received ARRA SIG (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act School Improvement Grants) funds to enable them to implement their improvement efforts. This paper describes the outcomes of these two ARRA SIG recipient schools: (1) Phoenix Elementary-Middle School; and (2) Arthur Hill High School. The experiences of these…

The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative research was to examine if and to what extent there were differences in students' cognitive load and the subsequent academic performance based on block bell schedule and traditional bell schedule for freshmen in Algebra 1 in the Southwestern United States. This study included students from two…

Arizona State University's (ASU) Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS) was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) GK-12 grant in 2009 entitled "Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools." The general focus of the grant is on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education in K-12 schools. The…

It didn't happen overnight. It took more than 20 years of negative public perception, flat student achievement scores, and disengaged students and staff and community members, but finally, the staff and administrators of Barry Goldwater High School--a large, comprehensive, suburban public high school in Phoenix, Arizona--knew that the day had…