Boston College

In this project, the researchers will develop, refine, and conduct an initial pilot study of an intervention program for LGBTQ+ students, called the Empowerment Program for Individual and Collective Health (EPIC-Health). Many LGBTQ+ students contend with unsafe learning environments and report greater school avoidance, poorer report card grades, and lower intentions to complete high school. There are few school-based interventions for LGBTQ+ youth who need tailored interventions to address t...

This project will examine associations between Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) practices and experiences and social-emotional and academic outcomes for sexual and gender minority (SGM) students. School-based extracurricular settings such as GSAs may promote a sense of school belonging, hope, positive affect, and self-worth in SGM students, which in turn may support positive academic outcomes. GSAs are now in over 37 percent of high schools across the United States, yet there is little data to in...

This purpose of this study is to determine the efficacy of City Connects, a student support intervention that addresses out-of-school factors that can affect students' ability to succeed academically and thrive in school. Research indicates that out-of-school experiences are a critical factor in children's success in school, and that poverty is a major factor in inequality in education outcomes. The City Connects intervention has provided support to students in high-poverty, urban elementary...

In a prior NCER funded grant (R305A090152, Investigating Vocabulary Breadth and Depth and Comprehension in English Monolingual and Spanish-English Bilingual Elementary School Students), researchers explored the relationships between linguistic and component reading skills and reading comprehension in English monolingual students and Spanish-speaking English Language Learners (ELLs). Findings from this study suggest that skills in linguistic awareness are related to reading skills. Linguisti...

This study will extend recent research on the imputation of scores for excluded students by using multilevel modeling to increase the accuracy with which scores for excluded students can be imputed.

This project will further test and evaluate the fit statistic previously developed for NAEP by the principal investigator. A major goal of the study is to determine how the fit statistic operates in real world studies of how well the NAEP scales fit data from sub-groups of students whose performance is known to be non-standard.