To improve reading achievement, teachers must ensure students actively engage in productive and meaningful reading tasks. Students with an established history of reading difficulty--including those with reading disabilities--may, over time, develop behaviors for passive and active avoidance of reading tasks. The current study explored the effects…

Recess is a critical source of physical, social and emotional health and well-being for children, but generally not prioritized during online learning. A 13-week structured recreation intervention was delivered virtually during recess to students in the fifth and sixth grades (age 10-12 years; N = 71) at one elementary school (Phoenix, AZ, USA).…

Background: School connectedness (SC) is associated with improved health and academic outcomes. The purposes of this study were to explore factors contributing to students' perceptions of SC and if participation in structured recreation at school was associated with SC. Methods: We used concurrent mixed-methods including cross-sectional…

Objective: Sport is an important source of physical, social and emotional health and well-being among children. Sports participation at school may provide young people with the opportunity to build interpersonal skills and develop supportive social relationships with peers and adults, which may translate to positive experiences during the school…

Graffiti artist Sentrock sees his graffiti as a selfless act, a way of giving back to the community--when done legally--and inspires a group of middle school students. This is a case study of an artist and educator who teaches about graffiti art in public schools. He is unique in that he delineates between graffiti art and vandalism, and teaches…

This action research project, which was entitled the Phoenix Project, sought answers to the following research questions: (1) How might participating in a bi-weekly book study of "Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students" (Hammond, 2015) in…

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…

Past research on parentification suggests that adopting adult responsibilities to the point at which the child plays a parental role places children at risk for poor mental and behavioral health outcomes. Since family relations are particularly important in Mexican culture, two hypotheses were posed to examine the indirect effects of…

Latinos are a multiracial ethnic group, and as such, within-group differences in ethnoracial appearance deserve to be studied and understood within the racialized American context and in connection to specific health and mental health outcomes. This article presents the findings of a study conducted with middle school Mexican heritage students (n…

This article examines changes in the drug resistance strategies used by urban American Indian (UAI) middle school students during a pilot test of a substance use prevention curriculum designed specifically for UAI youth, "Living in 2 Worlds" (L2W). L2W teaches four drug resistance strategies (refuse, explain, avoid, leave [R-E-A-L]) in…

This study looks deeply inside 17 schools that stand at the vanguard of the current revolution in teaching. This new National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) report reveals the substantive ways in which these schools are providing their teachers with more time to reflect on, develop, and hone their craft, by very explicitly leveraging an…

The Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program is a gang- and delinquency-prevention program delivered by law enforcement officers within a school setting. Originally designed in 1991 by Phoenix-area law enforcement agencies to address local needs, the program quickly spread across the United States. In this article, we describe…

This study describes perspectives of participants in a substance abuse and HIV prevention (HIVP) program targeted to middle school students and families in an urban Phoenix, Arizona, school district. Data collection and analyses complement past quasi-experimental, pre/post designs which found the program to be successful in terms of increasing…

This study examined how ethnic composition and linguistic acculturation within schools affected the efficacy of a youth substance use prevention model program. Data came from a randomized trial of the "keepin' it REAL" program, using a predominantly Mexican American sample of middle school students in Phoenix, Arizona. Schools were…

As a charter school sponsor (authorizer), the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation submits an accountability report to the Ohio Department of Education at the end of November each year. The report includes profiles of each Fordham-sponsored school, as well as graphics comparing the achievement data of its schools, their home districts, and statewide…