Education

Poor and largely minority school districts face an enormous challenge in staffing their schools with effective teachers.

This is a special initiative at the Foundation, developed with the Principal Investigators to increase the capacity of practicing social scientists to design and carry out credible group-based intervention studies.

Can a simple, low-cost intervention increase the number of low-income high school students taking the necessary steps to go to college?

Can the academic performance of Black students be increased using interventions designed to reduce their stress and anxiety about being negatively stereotyped?

How do students’ peers and friendships affect their physical, verbal, and social aggression during the transition from elementary to middle school?

Does participation in a race and a gender Intergroup Dialogue have educational effects? What processes that take place within Dialogues account for demonstrated effects?

Dr. Yowell will work for the National Writing Project to learn about staff development in urban schools. She will also work directly with the Superintendent of Chicago’s public schools on education reform.

This project involves a series of studies testing a model of the well-documented ethnic achievement gap between Black and Latino students on the one hand and White and Asian students on the other.

Does an intensive reading program based on direct teaching of metacognitive skills and cooperative learning improve the literacy skills of young adolescents, particularly those who are at risk?

Is Making Meaning, an elementary school reading comprehension program, effective?