Relationships Among Band Festival Ratings, Director Gender, and Other Selected Factors

The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among high school band festival ratings and director gender as well as school locale, school size, student socioeconomic status (SES), student race, repertoire difficulty, and ensemble name. Data included overall ratings of bands ( N = 257) that performed at District Concert Assessments held across the state of Virginia during 2019 as well as demographic information from the National Center for Education Statistics. Statistical analysis of a subset of these performances ( n = 151) revealed a statistically significant association between ratings and director gender, with male-directed ensembles more likely to receive a “I” rating than female-directed ensembles. However, hierarchical logistic regression revealed that repertoire difficulty and ensemble name were the best predictors of whether an ensemble would receive a “I” rating. Implications include the need to examine why female band directors may choose less difficult repertoire than male directors and to explore strategies for making the secondary band teaching profession more equitable and inclusive.

An Input for Stakeholders’ Management and Engagement Primer (SMEP) of Basic Education in the New Normal in Laguna Cluster, Philippines Insight

Crafting contingency plans and interventions in the Philippines' basic education in the new normal is the main concern of the study. Thus, stakeholders’ support for basic education and the school’s implementation in Laguna cluster for the school year 2020-2021 are also determined in this study. Descriptive correlational design was utilized in which 650 individuals served as respondents who are a combination of school heads, master teachers, and teachers in the city schools’ division in Laguna. The result of the study revealed that there is a significant and positive correlation between stakeholder support and the degree of basic education delivery in the new normal, according to Pearson's Coefficient of Correlation. Stakeholder support for the implementation of basic education in the new normal was moderated by school size and demonstrated a high substantial relationship in terms of Learning Environment, Learning Support, Technology Support, Training and Development, and Direct Assistance. The use of regression coefficient showed that there is an immersive impact of school size on programs and tools in the delivery of basic education in the modern normal. On the other hand, there is no discernible interactive impact on the school scale. Hence, the empirical findings of the study were the basis of the researcher for the creation of a comprehensive contingency intervention plan. The Stakeholders’ Management and Engagement Primer (SMEP) was crafted and recommended to all school leaders to bridge the gap between the stakeholders’ support and the schools participating in the new normal adoption of basic education in Laguna cluster, Philippines.

“Everybody Knows Everybody”: Adolescents’ Perceptions of What Helps Them Succeed in a Rural Title I School

The current study explored adolescents’ perceptions of what contributes to their experiences of success in a rural Title I school through interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Participants included adolescents who were enrolled at a rural Title I Middle/High School in the southern United States. The single campus school district serves approximately 185 students from Prekindergarten to grade 12. Approximately, 73% of the students are identified as At-Risk, 88% of the students are economically disadvantaged, and 100% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Ten students from this school, with assent and parental consent, participated in the current study. Participants’ ages ranged from 13 to 18, and the students represented different genders (seven males, three females) and various racial and ethnic backgrounds (three Black/African American, four Latinx, two White, and one Biracial). Results from the current study suggest low-income adolescents in a rural Title I school perceived (a) school size, (b) family support, and (c) their own internal drive to succeed as contributing to their success at school. These themes, their corresponding subthemes, and representative participant statements are included. Implications for school administrators, teachers, and counselors along with directions for future research are discussed.

School-level Factors and Consent Form Return Rate in a School-based Vision Program

Objective: School-based vision programs provide care directly in schools. Parental consent is typically required for student participation. In this paper, we examine school-level factors associated with consent form return. Methods: We included 123 schools served by a vision program in Baltimore, Maryland between the 2016-17 and 2018-19 school years. Multiple linear regression modeling was used to examine the associations between consent return rate and school type (elementary, elementary/middle or middle school), school size, student attendance, student mobility, percent of students in special education, poverty (percent eligible for free and reduced-price lunch), teacher qualifications, parent response rate to annual school climate survey, vision screening failure rate, and year of vision program participation (cohort). Results: The final model explained 26.2% of variability in consent return rate. Overall consent return rate was 57.8% (range 9.4%-100%). School size (β = -2.419, p < .01) and cohort (βCohort2 = 11.988, p < .01) were significantly associated with consent rate. Whereas poverty (β = 0.225, p < .10) and mobility (β = -0.647, p < .10) were relevant, they did not reach statistical significance. Conclusions: School-level factors are significantly associated with consent form return rates. School-based vision programs should consider additional measures to increase consent form return, especially in larger schools and schools with high rates of student mobility.

Athletic training employment in secondary schools by geographic setting and school size within the United States.

Context: The Athletic Training Locations and Services (ATLAS) Annual Report suggests there are differences in athletic trainer (AT) employment status on the basis of geographic locale. However, the influence of geographic locale and the school size on AT employment is undetermined. Objective: To describe if differences exist in the odds of having AT services by locale for public and private schools, and by student enrollment for public schools. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Public and private secondary schools with athletics programs. Patients or Other Participants: Data from 20,078 US public and private secondary schools were obtained. Main Outcome Measures(s): Data were collected by the ATLAS Project. AT employment status, locales (City, Suburban, Town, and Rural) for public and private schools, and school size category (large, moderate, medium, and small) only for public schools were obtained. AT employment status was examined for each category with odds ratios. A prediction model was produced by Logistic Regression Analysis. Results: Of the 19,918 public and private schools with AT employment status and locale, Suburban schools had the highest access to AT services (80.1%) with an increased odds compared with Rural schools (OR = 3.55 [3.28 to 3.850]). Of 15,850 public schools with AT employment status and student enrollment, large schools had the highest rate of having AT services (92.1%) with nearly 18.5 times greater odds (OR = 18.480 [16.197 to 21.083]) versus small schools. The logistic model determined that an odds of having access to AT increases by 2.883 times as the school size goes up by one category. Conclusions: Nationally, Suburban schools and large public schools have the largest access to AT services compared to schools that are in more remote areas and with less student enrollment. These findings elucidate the geographic locales and student enrollment levels where AT services are most prevalent.

ProQuest African American Heritage

African American Heritage a database for African American family history research, provided by ProQuest. Here, the user has access to a wide variety of military, birth, marriage, cohabitation, death, and census records. Also included are records from the Freedman’s Bank and various registers of slaves and free(d) persons of color. The former was a bank chartered by the federal government to encourage and guide the economic development of African American communities in the period following the end of slavery in the U.S. The latter refers to records, maintained by a number of states prior to 1865, of slaves and free(d) persons of color. Also available to the user are contacts to a community of genealogy researchers, who can provide assistance and mentoring. The readability of the documents available here can vary. Some are too faded to read easily, even with magnification, and others are handwritten, which can make them difficult to interpret. Navigating, enlarging, and reducing documents can be done without difficulty, though the range of movement and magnification is somewhat limited. Documents can be browsed and/or searched for by title, author, publisher, date, subject, language (although, at present, English is the only language available), surname and personal name, and location.The search and browse options here are understandable and can produce useful results, though the number produced by any one query is usually not extensive, so multiple queries may be needed for any research project. Pricing for this database is determined by library or school size and the number of potential users, and consortia discounts are available (contact ProQuest for a specific price quote). Its licensing agreement is the same as those used for all ProQuest databases, and in its length and composition is quite average. The quality and quantity of content in this resource is not exceptional, but it will certainly be of use to those researching African American family history, and more generally Africana Studies, especially in the states indicated in this review.

What Do Adolescents Know about Citizenship? Measuring Student’s Knowledge of the Social and Political Aspects of Citizenship

This paper analyses how young people’s citizenship knowledge is related to the different domains of citizenship in their daily lives. Based on a representative sample of some 5300 students in the third year of 80 Dutch secondary schools, our study relates citizenship knowledge to student background and school characteristics. The knowledge test developed for this study situates citizenship knowledge in the literature and the societal and political context defining the social structure students live in. The contribution of our study lies in this broad conceptualisation of citizenship, which is reflected in fine-grained, more specific results than the outcomes of earlier research. Gender differences are particularly pronounced in the social aspects of citizenship and are small in the political domain. As far as ethnic background is concerned, we see knowledge differences in the domain of “acting democratically”. This is also the domain where most of the differences in citizenship knowledge between students of the various schools and tracks occur. School size, public/private school, urbanisation and a more heterogeneous student population cannot explain these differences. To mitigate inequalities in citizenship knowledge between and within schools, which are relatively large in the Netherlands, further research is necessary to investigate micro-level mechanisms within schools.