Previous research suggests that there are academic benefits when students and teachers share the same race/ethnicity because such teachers can serve as role models, mentors, advocates, or cultural translators. In this paper, we obtain estimates of achievement changes as students are assigned to teachers of different races/ethnicities from grades 3…

As an organization made up of Michiganders, we know well how our parents once prided themselves on the quality of our state's public schools. Sadly, we have little to be proud of today. Our state's educational performance is lackluster by practically any reliable measure. In this report, we lay out a common-sense agenda to raise Michigan's…

This article contains four parts. It begins with a description of the Child Development Project, a research project aimed at discovering ways to integrate a focus on students' social and moral development in elementary schools. Then we describe the project's mixed results in helping teachers successfully apply its approach to classroom management,…

This report examines one component of the current school accountability system--learning gains. We find that learning gain percentages are affected by a variety of factors including starting achievement level, socioeconomic status, and English language learner status when the current definition of learning gains is used. Hence, we propose a new…

Academic Motivation Scale-Chemistry (AMS-Chemistry), an instrument based on the self-determination theory, was used to evaluate students' motivation in two organic chemistry courses, where one course was primarily lecture-based and the other implemented flipped classroom and peer-led team learning (Flip-PLTL) pedagogies. Descriptive statistics…

The purpose of this article is to present the Knights of Distinction, a co-curricular program that encourages undergraduate students to plan, connect, and reflect in the pursuit of their academic and professional goals. Knights of Distinction is a program within the Office of Experiential Learning at the University of Central Florida. Its purpose…

A report issued in 2012 by the United States Government Accountability Office (US Government Accountability Office, 2012) concluded that the United States is not producing enough graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) to meet the demands of its economy. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics…

There is a sea change occurring in education across the country in the systematic way that everyone considers "what" students should be learning and "how" teachers should be evaluated. Amidst the sweeping changes in the enterprise of teaching and learning, English language learners, or ELLs, are one subgroup of students that…

School performance pressures apply disproportionately to tested grades and subjects. Using longitudinal administrative data--including achievement data from untested grades--and teacher survey data from a large urban district, we examine schools' responses to those pressures in assigning teachers to high-stakes and low-stakes classrooms. We find…

As state tests of student achievement are used for an increasingly wide array of high- and low-stakes purposes, evaluating their instructional sensitivity is essential. This article uses data from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Project to examine the instructional sensitivity of 4 states' mathematics and English…

We investigated relationships between students' perceptions of parental involvement in schooling, their Spanish classroom environment and student outcomes (attitudes and achievement). Modified Spanish versions of the What Is Happening In this Class?, Test of Spanish-Related Attitudes-L[subscript 1], a parental involvement questionnaire and a…

The PDS Partnership between the University of Central Florida and Friendship Elementary School, a Title 1 school in Volusia County, focused on the National Association for Professional Development Schools' (PDS) "Essentials" in order to establish a shared vision of success for pre-service teachers. Key leaders from both the school and…

This study was conducted with 11th- and 12th-grade high school students in western Florida. These students were not meeting the required achievement level in English language arts needed for graduation. This qualitative study investigated the barriers that hinder high school students' achievement in English language arts as a graduation…

The purpose of this study was to explore the learning strategies used by ethnically diverse learners and to investigate the relationships among the constructs of classroom goal structure, achievement goal orientation, motivation and self-regulated learning in an ethnically diverse population of fourth and fifth grade learners (n = 396). Goal…

Self-regulation, an increasingly focus of social-emotional learning curriculums for over twenty years according to Zimmerman (2008), provides students with the ability of "setting goals, selecting strategies, and self-monitoring their effectiveness" as opposed to waiting for others to redirect their behavior (p. 166). Prekindergarten…