City School District Research Articles

Mapping diabetes burden by school-district for school-based diabetes prevention interventions in selected cities in Michigan, USA.

To decrease diabetes morbidity and mortality rates, early interventions are needed to change lifestyles that are often cemented early, making school-based interventions important. However, with limited resources and lack of within-county diabetes data, it is difficult to determine which local areas require intervention. To identify at-risk school districts, this study mapped diabetes prevalence and related deaths by school district using geographic information systems (GIS). The 2010-2014 records of diabetes-related deaths were identified for 13 cities in Michigan, USA. Diabetes prevalence was estimated using the weighted average of population by school district from the '500 Cities Project' of the Centres of Disease Control and prevention (CDC). Prevalence and mortality rates were mapped by school district and the correlation between diabetes prevalence and mortality rate analysed using the Spearman's rank correlation. Years of potential life lost (YPLL) were calculated using a 75-year endpoint. The result indicated there were geographic variations in diabetes prevalence, mortality and YPLL across Michigan. Most census tracts in the cities of Detroit, Flint and downtown Grand Rapids had higher diabetes prevalence and mortality rate with rs (628)=0.52, P<0.005. School districts with high mortality rates also had high prevalence with rs (13)=0.72, P=0.002. Flint City School District showed a higher rate of diabetes prevalence, death and YPLL than others and should thus be considered a priority for diabetes prevention interventions. Using school districts as the geographic spatial unit of analysis, we identified local variation in diabetes burden for targeting school-based diabetes prevention interventions.

White preservice music educators’ perceptions of teaching predominantly Black student populations in city schools

ABSTRACT The purpose of this research was to explore how five White preservice teachers described working with predominantly Black student populations in city school music classrooms. Participants with prior K-12 school music experience in primarily White public and private school settings were assigned to student teaching placements in a city school district in the United States. Using critical race theory as a framework, this study focused on three research questions: (1) How do participants’ life experiences influence the way they think about teaching racialised student populations? (2) How do participants’ student teaching experiences with racialized populations shape their views of music education? and (3) How do participants’ student teaching experiences influence their desire to teach in city schools? Findings suggest the participants had a limited understanding of White privilege and did not recognise racial inequalities in American public-school education. And while participants felt better prepared to teach in a city school classroom with a predominantly Black student population, none expressed a strong desire to work in these settings after completing their student teaching experience.

Get Connected Now: A Conversation with School Leaders and Policy Makers about Expanding Rural Broadband Access

At the most recent National Forum to Advance Rural Education in November of 2020, editor Devon Brenner led a panel discussion about current and future efforts to expand broadband access for rural schools and communities with Brandon Presley, Public Service Commissioner for the Northern District of Mississippi; John Conradi, executive director of Connect Americans Now; and two Mississippi school leaders, Wayne Rodolfich, superintendent of the Pascagoula-Gautier School District, and Tyler Hansford, superintendent of Union City School District and chair of the Mississippi Rural Education Association. Their conversation is excerpted here. Some portions have been edited for cohesiveness and clarity.

The Effects of Career and Technical Education: Evidence from the Connecticut Technical High School System

We examine the effect of admission to 16 stand-alone technical high schools within the Connecticut Technical High School System (CTHSS) on student educational and labor market outcomes. To identify the causal effect of admission on student outcomes, we exploit the fact that CTHSS utilizes a score-based admissions system and identify the effect of admission using a regression discontinuity approach. We find that male students attending one of the technical high schools are approximately 10 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school and 8 percentage points less likely to attend college, although there is some evidence that the negative effects on college attendance fade over time. We also find that male students attending a technical high school have quarterly earnings that are approximately 31% higher. Analyses of potential mechanisms behind these results reveal that male students that attend a technical high school have higher 9th grade attendance rates and higher 10th grade test scores. We find little evidence that attending a technical high school affects the educational or labor outcomes of women. These effects appear relatively broad based across different types of students in that we find little evidence of heterogeneity in these effects over student attributes like race and ethnicity, free lunch eligibility or residence in a poor, central city school district. However, when distinguishing between students based on the Career and Technical Education (CTE) offerings of the high school that these students likely would have attended, we find that the effects of admission to a CTHSS school are noticeably larger when the counterfactual high school has less CTE offerings.

The Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of Innovative Strategies to Reduce Food Insecurity among Children in the United States

The Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of Innovative Strategies to Reduce Food Insecurity among Children in the United States

A Post-Hoc Comparison of Two Sexual Health Curricula on Sexual Health Knowledge, Perception, and Attitudes

A post-hoc study was conducted to ascertain the effect of comprehensive sex education on of 7th graders’ knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes regarding sexual health and sexual identities in a small city school district in the Midwest USA. All five middle schools in the district participated, three of which used a comprehensive curriculum and two taught their existing curriculum. A total of 260 online surveys were completed by the 7th graders through Qualtrics. Chi-square tests were conducted, and the outcome showed a statistically significant difference in student perception and attitudes regarding sexual identity and orientation between the two curriculum groups. The comprehensive curriculum group scored higher than the existing curriculum group on items that indicate openness and respect regarding diversity in sexual identities and orientation. Given that LGBTQ+ students are at a greater risk to engage in self-harm and suicidal attempts, the outcome potentially suggests that a more open and accepting school atmosphere can be created by the implementation of a comprehensive sexual health curriculum. It implies that a purposive, systematic, and longitudinal effort to provide comprehensive sexual health education could also help reduce the challenges LGBTQ+ youth face outside of school.

Finding the Joy in Labor in the Salt Lake City School District

Finding the Joy in Labor in the Salt Lake City School District

Online and in-Person Violence, Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying in New Jersey: 2011-2016.

New Jersey (NJ) Safe Schools Program, primarily funded by the NJ Department of Education, has aims concerning safety and health including helping to alleviate harassment, intimidation, and bullying (HIB) in secondary school because HIB can affect learning. We evaluated officially reported adolescent HIB total incidents and estimated rates in NJ public city and county school districts for the 2011-2016 school years. A cross-sectional observational study using population-based state-reported public data. We calculated point prevalence and incidence rates for K-12 students in 22 public city school districts, students in 21 career-technical-vocational education (CTE) school districts, and 8 special services school districts during 2011-2016. HIB is prevalent in NJ school classrooms. HIB comprised ≥75% of total officially reported in-school violence-related incidents in a given school year. Rates per 100 enrollees of total officially reported incidents for the 5-year period of 2011-2016 was highest in special services school districts (5.00; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 4.67, 5.34) followed by CTE districts (1.94; 95% CI: 1.86, 2.01), and lowest in city districts (1.46; 95% CI: 1.44, 1.48). The special services school district also had the highest rates per year and the 5-year period. Data analyses suggested ideas for further research and improvements for school HIB incident reports. Policies and programs could remedy issues observed in state secondary school classrooms. Best practices within districts and schools can help protect students from HIB and promote safety, health, learning, and maturation.

Adolescent Self-Reported Use of Highly Effective Contraception: Does Provider Counseling Matter?

To examine associations between provider counseling about specific contraceptive methods and method choices reported by adolescents. A cross-sectional, secondary analysis of the local 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, to which we added 2 new/modified questions about long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). Rochester, New York. Female students in 9th-12th grade in the Rochester City School District. An anonymous, standardized survey was administered to collect data. We studied associations between students' reported contraceptive use and counseling (LARC, short-acting contraception [SAC], neither), health care factors, and potential risk/protective factors. Data were analyzed using bivariate and multivariate methods. Among 730 sexually active female respondents, 353/730 (49%) were African American and 182/730 (25%) were Other/Mixed race. 416/730 (57%) used no hormonal method at last sex, and 95/730 (13%) used LARC. 210/730 (29%) of participants recalled any LARC-specific counseling, and 265/730 (36%) any counseling on SAC. Recall of LARC and SAC counseling and use were significantly associated with speaking privately with a provider, but were not related to personal risk/protective factors. Multivariate analyses showed that recollection of LARC counseling was significantly associated with higher odds of using either LARC (adjusted odds ratio, 14.3; P<.001) or SAC (adjusted odds ratio, 2.1; P=.007). Recollection of either LARC or SAC counseling was associated with significantly lower odds of using no contraception. Adolescents' use of LARC was only 13%, but those who recalled contraceptive counseling had higher odds of using some hormonal method. Efforts are needed to improve provider counseling, maintain confidentiality, and identify effective methods to engage adolescents in meaningful, memorable discussions of LARC.

Food allergy in at-risk adolescents with asthma: A key area for focus

BackgroundAsthma affects more than 6.2 million children in the United States and is a major source of chronic disease burden. Concurrent food allergy (FA) may be a risk factor for worse asthma outcomes. ObjectiveTo estimate the prevalence of FA among a cohort of adolescents with persistent asthma and assess whether FA is an independent risk factor for asthma morbidity. MethodsWe included 342 adolescents aged 12 to 16 years with persistent asthma from the Rochester city school district who participated in the School-Based Asthma Care for Teens trial between 2014 and 2018. Multivariable models were used to estimate the association between FA and asthma morbidity. ResultsOverall, 29% of adolescents with asthma reported having a FA. Although there were no statistically significant differences in daytime asthma symptoms, teens with FA had higher fractional exhaled nitric oxide (47.5 vs 33.9 P = .002) and reported more days with activity limitation owing to asthma (3.1 vs 2.3 days/2 weeks, P = .03) compared with teens without FA. Less than half (42%) of adolescents with FA had an epinephrine autoinjector. ConclusionThis study found FA to be common among this cohort of adolescents with asthma. Although FA was not related to asthma symptom severity, adolescents with FA had higher fractional exhaled nitric oxide and more activity limitation, and most did not have epinephrine autoinjectors. A history of FA and lack of epinephrine autoinjector may increase near-fatal outcomes in adolescents with asthma. Preventive measures in addition to standard asthma treatments are warranted for these teens.

Nevertheless, they persisted: How a group of ‘noisy moms’ overcame dismissal and helped to improve school food in a US small city school district

The feeding of children has long been a gendered project and women have historically led the charge in most US school food activism. I center the pivotal role of women volunteers in the initiation, equitable distribution, and quality monitoring of school food, showing how this work continues today through a case study of women school food activists. This paper is based on an ethnographic case study of a small and dedicated group of mothers who labored for nearly a decade to improve school food in a school district of a small city in the Pacific Northwest. My analysis highlights some ways the mothers’ efforts to improve school food were discounted. I consider factors that contributed to their sidelining, noting that even deeply knowledgeable, active, and involved parents may be unable to impact major and/or immediate changes in school food, and that mothers can be discounted because of their positionality as mothers. I share how, through long-term persistence, the women created a path for progress that ultimately led to major change in the district’s school food, yet their key role in laying groundwork for the change remained largely unrecognized.

Making a Reasonable Calculation: A Strategic Amendment to the IDEA

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) lays out a powerful set of protections and procedural safeguards for students with disabilities in public schools. Nevertheless, there is a persistent debate as to how far schools must go to fulfill their mandate under the IDEA. The Supreme Court recently addressed this question with its decision in Endrew F. v. Douglas City School District Re-1, holding that an educational program for a student with a disability must be “reasonably calculated” to enable a child’s progress in light of their circumstances. Currently, the Act’s statutory language mandates Individual Education Program (IEP) teams to consider a variety of factors including “the strengths of each child,” “the concerns of the parents,” “the results of the . . . most recent evaluation of the child,” and “the academic, developmental, and functional needs of the child.”1 This Note proposes an amendment to the IDEA, inspired by the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis framework used in business strategy, that adds external “threats” to this list of factors. This amendment will help parents, advocates, and schools better understand the Endrew F. standard and implement it with fidelity to the IDEA’s broad mandate.

An exploration of a new superintendent’s transition team as a facilitator of organizational socialization of senior district administrators

ABSTRACT Superintendents serve as the primary strategists and leaders for school divisions across the United States. Yet, organizational socialization to the community and to the district is one of the greatest challenges superintendents new to a district face as they transition into their roles. This case study examined how the work of the transition team in a large city school district contributed to the organizational socialization of the new superintendent and his senior district administrators. Findings indicate that the transition team process supported this new superintendent and his senior district administrators in understanding the knowledge, values, and priorities of the school system and in addressing the school district’s priority needs. However, the transition team process had additional outcomes not predicted at the start of this project: (1) it provided an opportunity for community stakeholders to come to agreement with district administrators on the priority needs of the district and on how to address these needs; (2) it led to the development of relationships with stakeholders, including local politicians, that furthered achievement of district goals; and (3) it provided political cover for district administrators to lead the change process through the production of a report with recommended goals.

Direct and indirect effects of strength-based parenting on adolescents’ school outcomes: Exploring the role of mental toughness

IntroductionStrength-based parenting defined as recognizing and cultivating strengths in children is potentially linked to important child and adolescent outcomes. In this study, direct and indirect effects (via mental toughness) of strength-based parenting on adolescents’ school outcomes, particularly, school engagement and burnout were examined. MethodsThe sample consisted of 350 high school students (ages 14–18 years; 49.7% female) using multistage cluster sampling from central school district of city of Aydın, Turkey. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires that assess strength-based parenting, mental toughness, school engagement, and burnout. ResultsResults showed that strength-based parenting is significantly and directly related to higher levels of school engagement, but not to school burnout. Furthermore, indirect effects of strength-based parenting on both school engagement and burnout through the mechanism of mental toughness were statistically significant. A series of multigroup post hoc analyses suggested that the structural model was robust across gender and age. ConclusionsThe present findings suggest that strength-based parenting plays a crucial role on adolescents’ school outcomes and these links are mediated by mental toughness. Implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

A Community Bundle to Lower School-Aged Obesity Rates in a Small Midwestern City

Background: Multi-component interventions in large communities such as Philadelphia can effectively lower childhood obesity rates. It is less clear whether this type of intervention can be successful in smaller communities with more limited resources. Norwood, Ohio is a small Midwestern city with a population of 19,207. In 2010, Ohio passed a school health law requiring Body Mass Index (BMI) screening of students in kindergarten and grades 3, 5 and 9 along with restrictions on competitive foods and vending machine products and a physical education requirement of 30 min per day. In 2014, Norwood implemented a multi-component childhood obesity prevention and treatment bundle of interventions. Our objective was to describe the effects if this bundle on childhood overweight/obesity (OW/OB) rates. We hypothesized that implementation of the bundle would lower the prevalence of OW/OB in Norwood school children. Methods: In 2012, the Healthy Kids Ohio Act was fully implemented in the Norwood City School District (NCSD). In 2014 a comprehensive bundle was implemented that included: 1. A student gardening program; 2. Supplementation of fresh produce to a local food pantry and a family shelter; 3. A farmers market; 4. A health newsletter; 5. Incentives in the school cafeterias to promote healthy food selection; 6. A 100-mile walking club; 7. “Cook for America” (a “cooked from scratch” intervention for school cafeterias); 8. A school-based obesity treatment clinic; Results: The OW/OB rate in the NCSD was 43% at the time of the Bundle implementation in 2014 and 37% in 2016 (p = 0.029). Conclusions: A childhood OW/OB prevention bundle can be implemented in a small city and is associated with a favorable change in BMI.

Judge rules against student‐athlete

Case name: Chisholm v. St. Mary's City School District Board of Education, et al., No. 3:16CV2849 (N.D. Ohio 12/26/18).

Access to Children's Literature

Reading is important because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything. (dePaola, 2010) These words from well-known children's author Tomie dePaola are important. Having access to books, and knowing how to read those books, opens up a world of possibilities for children. Unfortunately, not all children around the world have access to books, and access to books varies greatly according to the neighborhoods in which children live. There is a disparity in access to print for those children who live in poverty (Neuman & Moland, 2019), with high-poverty neighborhoods primarily composed of minority groups having the least access to books (Bischoff & Reardon, 2014), which limits their opportunities in school and beyond. Likewise, across our world, access to books matters. Children's books also provide important moral messages in educating young readers: to be kind to others, to value friendship, and to help others, to name a few. In The Inside Track for this issue, Andrea Mei-Ying Wu, a scholar at the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, discusses why access to books matters in Taiwan and across the globe. She considers the implications that an emphasis on children's access to books has on their lives and on the formation of global citizenship. Wu introduces the Editorial Task Force for Children's Books and discusses its mission and the implications of its launch in the 1960s, and she explains that examining the history of this campaign in Taiwan can help teachers consider why access to books matters for students in today's world. We hope readers will find something new in this issue's five feature articles. First, Pletcher, Hudson, John, and Scott describe how to balance the hybrid role of the literacy coach and reading interventionist. Hoch, McCarty, Gurvitz, and Sitkoski examine guided inquiry in the digital age and explain how it requires instructional moves that differ from traditional methods. Rawlins and Invernizzi reconceptualize sight words and note the importance of building early reading vocabulary, and Coakley-Fields describes how a fourth-grade teacher cultivated an inclusive classroom while weaving fiction discussions into classroom instruction. Last, McVicker studies the preferences of readers, whether they prefer to be plugged or unplugged. There are also five teaching tips in this issue. Kibler and Chapman provide tips on using culturally relevant texts to improve reading outcomes. Mikita, Rodgers, Berenbon, and Winkler show the importance of targeted prompts when used with scaffolding word solving during guided reading. Beach and Bolden note how word painting supports vocabulary development. Nash, Panther, and Elson provide a description of student-created book basket labels as a culturally sustaining literacy practice in the classroom, and Thomas shows the importance of building literacy environments to motivate African American boys to read by providing texts in which they can see reflections of themselves in print. This issue's Voices From the Classroom essay was written by Rebecca Benjamin, a literacy specialist in the Schenectady City School District, New York. She discusses simple steps toward enhancing engagement in the classroom using poetry. In the two departments in this issue, Literacy Across Disciplines and Digital Literacy, Fisher and Frey offer a description of literacy stations and how they can be used in content area learning, and Gallagher, Di Cesare, and Rowsell provide an intriguing description of their work with newcomer families, the families’ digital lives, and digital literacy. Returning to the words of dePaola, “Reading is important, because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything.” Access to books is the first step in combating illiteracy worldwide, but we must also remember the disparity in communities that live in poverty and that access to books is a greater challenge for children in poverty than for their middle class peers.

Dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline: The Philadelphia police school diversion program

Exclusionary discipline practices have made schools among the primary referral sources to the juvenile justice system, helping create and perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline. To dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline in Philadelphia, the City's police department initiated the Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program and collaborated with the City's school district, Department of Human Services (DHS), and other child-serving agencies to design and implement the program. This program diverts at-risk youth from school-based arrest and into community-based services to address identified needs. All students, ages 10 and older, without prior adjudications or open cases, who have committed designated summary or misdemeanor offenses on school grounds, are enrolled in this program and connected with a DHS-sponsored service provider—rather than facing arrest and automatic removal from school through suspension, expulsion, or disciplinary transfer. The Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program has been cited as a model of collaborative partnerships to address the school-to-prison pipeline. This paper describes the school-to-prison pipeline's creation; established diversionary efforts to keep students out of the justice system; and the development, procedures, implications, and limitations of the Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program.

Equalizing Resources vs. Retaining Black Political Power: Paradoxes of an Urban-Suburban School District Merger in Durham, North Carolina, 1958–1996

Two separate school districts—a city one and a county one—operated independently in Durham, North Carolina, until the early 1990s. The two districts merged relatively late compared to other North Carolina cities, such as Raleigh and Charlotte. In Durham, residents in both the county and city systems vehemently opposed the merger until the county commissioners ultimately bypassed a popular vote. African American advocates in the city school district, in particular, faced an impossible trade-off: city schools increasingly struggled financially because of an inequitable funding structure, but a merger would significantly threaten fair racial representation on the consolidated school board. This article explores this core tension in historical context by looking at several failed merger attempts from 1958 to 1988, as well as the 1991 merger implementation, against the backdrop of desegregation, economic transition, profound metropolitan changes, and protracted political battles in Durham.

Space and Place in Rural Program Implementation

Employing concepts of place and space, we consider the implementation of Early College initiatives in two small school districts in Ohio, situated in very different regions of the state. One is a rural district near the foothills of Appalachia, and the other is a small town district on the shores of Lake Erie. The paper examines data collected through a state-wide evaluation project. Our analysis suggests that where a school is located matters to the kinds of resources, opportunities and constrains it has for implementing state programs. Resources like transportation, access to college partners, and even proximity to other school districts made important differences to how these school districts implemented the Early College program. Given the variable conditions of school districts in Ohio and other states with a large number of rural and small city school districts, state policy makers should consider flexible implementation plans and variable levels of support.