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This project examined the implementation of student threat assessment in Florida public schools. Researchers investigated threat assessment training and implementation, which types of threat cases schools experienced, and how cases were resolved. This project used a mixed-method approach with four broad research questions: (1) What are stakeholder reactions to training and implementation of threat assessment in their school? (2) What are the characteristics of threat assessments conducted in Florida public schools? (3) What relationships exist among academic, disciplinary, and legal outcomes for students receiving a threat assessment? (4) Are there adverse disparities in student outcomes associated with race, ethnicity, or special education status?

The data produced by this study include three Case Data datasets (DS1-3), comprised of Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) case data on student threats from the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years; two Training Survey Data datasets (DS4/5), containing results from surveys of participants who completed Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG) trainings; and Needs Assessment Survey Data (DS6) from a survey of district school safety leads assessing needs and concerns about their district's threat assessment process.

Across the United States (U.S.), school districts have grappled with how to create safe community- and achievement-oriented schools and how to ensure the necessary discipline is applied transparently, fairly, and without bias. Two programs that many schools have turned to in order to achieve these goals are Schoolwide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and Restorative Justice (RJ). PBIS is an evidence-driven schoolwide behavioral management approach that aims to outline clear expectations for students and to cultivate shared norms and practices across classrooms and school spaces. PBIS has become a popular approach in schools and districts: as of 2020; over 19,000 schools in the U.S. have implemented PBIS.

A second program, Restorative Justice (RJ), has grown in popularity in recent years. RJ typically focuses on restorative relationship building between affected parties, peaceful reconciliation, and non-punitive approaches to rectifying harm, using a structured circle discussion format. RJ schools use both community circles, designed to build a safe space for students and staff to share and listen to each other, and restorative circles, designed to share perspectives on and redress a behavioral issue.

Working with a large school district in a mid-Atlantic state, researchers set out to test whether these two programs substitute for or complement each other. In partnership with the school district researchers conducted two separate school-level randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The first RCT (RCT 1) sought to uncover the marginal impact of RJ by adding the program to a set of randomly selected schools that were already implementing PBIS. The second RCT (RCT 2) was designed to discover the impact of introducing both programs together into schools that had neither program at baseline. Researchers conducted student and staff surveys to collect measures of school climate, teacher logs to record program implementation, and researchers also received administrative data from the district on student test scores, teacher and student absences, student disciplinary infractions, and school costs.

There is growing evidence of the effectiveness of each of these programs in isolation. A recent meta-analysis of 32 experimental and quasi-experimental impact studies of PBIS found that PBIS reduced disciplinary exclusions and problem behavior and increased academic achievement. The findings were statistically significant and showed small to medium effect sizes. Individual studies have found that PBIS reduces the use of office disciplinary referrals and other exclusionary disciplinary measures (including the use of in-school and out-of-school suspensions), while improving student behavior and attitudes across school levels. Individual studies show variable--some statistically significant and some null--impacts on academic outcomes.

The empirical evidence on the effect of RJ in U.S. schools is more limited, with little rigorous casual evidence published to date. Based on patterns across rigorous and non-rigorous research, restorative justice is associated with decreases in suspension rates and disciplinary disparities, improved student behavior, and improved school climate and relationships.

These data were collected as part of the evaluation of the Healthy School Program (HSP), a program that provides support to elementary, middle, and high schools in the United States as they work to create healthy school environments that promote physical activity and healthy eating for students and staff. HSP was created in 2006 by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The HSP evaluation addressed both process and impact outcomes:

1. Is the HSP technical assistance and training model effective in increasing the implementation of policies and programs that promote and provide access to healthier foods and more physical activity before, during and after school?

2. Are there distinctive or common school-level characteristics that hasten or hinder school-level implementation of policies and programs that promote and provide access to healthy foods and physical activity in the school setting in HSP schools?

3. Does participation in HSP contribute to an increase in healthy eating behaviors and physical activity participation among students? Does participation in HSP contribute to a decrease in body mass index (BMI) among students?

The evaluation used a mixed-method design incorporating both quantitative and qualitative components. The quantitative component of the evaluation was a longitudinal design that measured student changes in eating and physical activity behaviors and BMI and schools' implementation of policies and practices promoted by HSP. For the qualitative component the evaluation team conducted site visits in a sample of HSP schools.

Nine data files constitute this data collection:

1. HSP Participation and Inventory Data File, 2006-2011 (originally called the Inventory Data File)

2. Pilot Student Survey Data File

3. Pilot Student Height and Weight Measurements Data File

4. Survey of Students in Boston and Miami-Dade Public Schools Data File

5. HSP Participation and Inventory Data File, 2006-2014

6. Arizona, Prince George's County and Nevada Healthy Schools Youth Survey Data File

7. Arizona and Prince George's County Youth Height and Weight Measurements Data File

8. Arizona Academic Achievement Data File

9. Prince George's County School Wellness Coordinator Survey Data File

Dataset 1 contains data on school characteristics, HSP engagement indicators, baseline and follow-up responses to the Healthy Schools Inventory, and indices derived from the Inventory for all HSP schools as of August 2011. The Inventory collected information about each school's adherence to the Healthy Schools Program Framework, a set of best practice guidelines that promote physical activity and healthy eating among students and staff.

Datasets 2, 4 and 6 contain data from baseline and follow-up administrations of the Healthy Schools Youth Survey questionnaire in three samples of HSP schools: students in grades 5-12 in the initial pilot cohort of HSP schools; students in grades 5, 8 and 10 in the 2007-2008 cohort of HSP schools in Boston, Massachusetts and Miami-Dade County, Florida; and students in grades 5, 8 and 10 or 11 in HSP schools in Arizona, Nevada and Prince George's County, Maryland. Topics covered by the Healthy Schools Youth Survey questionnaire include eating and physical activity habits, attitudes about healthy eating and physical activity, health knowledge, and school food environments.

Datasets 3 and 7 contain baseline and follow-up height and weight measurements and derived BMIs, the former for students in grades 4-12 in schools sampled by the Pilot Student Survey and the latter for students in grades 5, 8, and 10 in Arizona and grades 1-12 in Prince George's County in schools sampled by the Arizona, Prince George's County and Nevada Healthy Schools Youth Survey.

Dataset 5 is an update to Dataset 1. Like Dataset 1 it contains data on HSP participation and engagement and school characteristics. Dataset 5 covers 8,500 schools that participated in HSP through fall 2014. It includes 4,028 of the 4,542 schools in Dataset 1.

Dataset 8 contains average math, reading and language scores for grades in HSP and comparable non-HSP schools in Arizona. Every record in the data file represents a grade (one or more of the grades 2-9) within a school (150 schools) for a given school year (up to seven years 2007-2008 to 2013-2014).

Dataset 9 contains data from a survey of HSP school coordinators in Prince Georges County. The coordinators were interviewed about the implementation of HSP in their schools.

ICPSR did not receive the site visit data.

The purpose of this project was to better understand how to improve children's transitions from Head Start programs to elementary schools. Central to this project was a systems approach that recognizes that effective transitions require intentional engagement from both the sending programs (Head Start) and the receiving programs (elementary schools). This approach also recognized that transition strategies and practices must be implemented at multiple levels - among classroom teachers in Head Start and kindergarten, families, elementary school principals and Head Start directors, Head Start grantees and school districts, and state and federal agencies. Specifically, the project aimed to explore the definition of "successful transitions" by addressing the following research questions:

1. What strategies and practices are Head Start programs implementing to support children as they transition from Head Start to kindergarten? What is the content, quality, and quantity of these strategies and practices? How are they experienced by children, families, teachers, and other direct service providers?
2. What characterizes relationships/partnerships among Head Start programs, elementary schools, and other community partners that support children's successful transitions from Head Start to kindergarten? What are the specific facilitators of, and barriers to, successful transitions?
3. What are the key perceived short- and long-term outcomes of transition strategies and practices for children, families, Head Start teachers, and kindergarten teachers? What are the key contextual factors and mechanisms that result in these key perceived outcomes?

This project included several key tasks, including a review of the knowledge base, the development of a theory of change, a scan of existing measures and data sources to determine alignment with the theory of change, the development of new measures based on gaps identified in the measures scan, and the implementation of a comparative multi-case study.

Tools for Life: Relationship-Building Solutions (TFL) is a program designed to improve school climate and safety through the proactive development of elementary and middle school students' interpersonal skills (relationship-building and communication) and intrapersonal skills (self-regulation and resiliency). In the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 school years, the Jackson (Mississippi) Public School District (JPSD) implemented TFL in grades 1 through 8. RAND researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine whether TFL, integrated into existing school practices, positively affected school climate and safety in the district.

This project described the implementation of TFL in JPSD, calculated its costs, and evaluated the program's effectiveness. TFL was designed to improve whole-school change in relationships among staff and students, but the project researchers found that implementation of TFL in JPSD schools was generally shallow, and the program was rarely, if at all, implemented across a whole school as it was designed. TFL had little impact: After one year of implementation, there were no practically or statistically significant differences between schools that implemented TFL and those that did not in measures of students' social and emotional, school climate, behavioral, or achievement outcomes. In addition to the uneven implementation of the program, methodological limitations of the study and contextual factors in JPSD may have contributed to these finding.

The Impacts and Implementation of the i3-Funded Scale-Up of Success for All study examined the implementation and impacts of a whole-school reform model, Success for All (SFA), which seeks to increase reading proficiency among students in elementary schools serving low-income children, as this model was scaled up under an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant from the United States Department of Education. The impact evaluation used a cluster random assignment design in which 37 schools in five school districts were selected at random either to implement SFA (the program group schools) or to put in place their business-as-usual reading program (the control group schools). This collection contains Parts 1 to 7 for public use; and Part 8 for restricted use only.

In Part 1: Primary Student Sample data, children who began kindergarten in sampled schools and remained in them through second grade were assessed using standardized assessments of phonics skills, reading fluency, and comprehension. In Part 2: Auxiliary Sample, additional analyses examined third-year impacts on reading skills for all second graders, whether or not they remained continuously enrolled in the study schools, and for students in grades 3 through 5. The analysis also examined impacts for subgroups defined by ethnicity, early literacy skills measured upon entry into kindergarten, and other variables.

Part 3: School Achievement Snapshot Data contain implementation data for analysis using an instrument created by SFA's developers that measures the extent to which program elements were put in place at each program group at the end of each year. This instrument was utilized to assess fidelity to the program model. The implementation analysis was also informed by principal (Part 5: Principal Survey) and teacher surveys (Part 4: Teacher Survey) in all schools, as well by logs (Part 6: Teacher Log) that asked teachers to document their instructional practices in early reading classes. These data, collected in all three study years, make it possible to measure implementation over the study period and to compare program group schools and control group schools on a variety of dimensions.

Part 7: Scale-Up Sample Data provided data on the schools that adopted SFA (and those which were approached, but did not adopt), and schools that adopted before the Investing in Innovations grant. Part 8 is the restricted version of Part 7, which retains geographic location variables.

The Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) is a system of related questionnaires that provide descriptive data on the context of elementary and secondary education and provide policymakers a variety of statistics on the condition of education in the United States. The SASS system covers a wide range of topics from teacher demand, teacher and principal characteristics, general conditions in schools, principals' and teachers' perceptions of school climate and problems in their schools, teacher compensation, district hiring and retention practices, to basic characteristics of the student population.

Questionnaires, methodology information and summary tables can be downloaded directly from the SASS website. Of cultural interest are the data on library and media centers which offer insights into subjects such as library staffing, library collections, and library expenditures. These data can be accessed through the National Center for Education Statistics DataLab.

Policymakers involved in arts and culture would find tables from the SASS/TFS Table Library important to their work, including the following:

• Number and percentage of public school teachers whose main assignment is in arts and music, by main teaching assignment and community type: 2011-12
• Number of public schools that reported having library media centers, by state: 2011-12
• Average number of holdings, additions, and expenditures in library media centers during 2010-11 for various kinds of materials, by state: 2011-12
• Average hours public and private third grade students spent on art and music during a typical full week of school, by selected school characteristics: 2007-08

The Fast Response Survey System (FRSS) was established in 1975 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), United States Department of Education. FRSS is designed to collect issue-oriented data within a relatively short time frame. FRSS collects data from state education agencies, local education agencies, public and private elementary and secondary schools, public school teachers, and public libraries. To ensure minimal burden on respondents, the surveys are generally limited to three pages of questions, with a response burden of about 30 minutes per respondent. Sample sizes are relatively small (usually about 1,000 to 1,500 respondents per survey) so that data collection can be completed quickly. Data are weighted to produce national estimates of the sampled education sector. The sample size is large enough to permit limited breakouts by classification variables. However, as the number of categories within the classification variables increases, the sample size within categories decreases, which results in larger sampling errors for the breakouts by classification variables.

The Arts Education Surveys of Elementary School Teachers provide national estimates on arts education and arts instructors in public elementary schools during the 2009-10 school year. This data collection contains three surveys that provide information about music specialists, visual arts specialists, and self-contained classroom teachers. These three surveys are part of a set of seven surveys that collected data on arts education during the 2009-10 school year. In addition to these elementary teacher surveys, the set includes a survey of elementary school principals, a survey of secondary school principals, and two secondary teacher-level surveys. A stratified sample design was used to select teachers and arts specialists (music and visual arts) for the Arts Education Surveys of Elementary School Teachers. Data collection was conducted September 2009 through August 2010. Altogether, 1,148 eligible music specialists, 918 eligible visual arts specialists, and 734 eligible self-contained classroom teachers completed the surveys by web, mail, fax, or telephone.

The elementary teacher surveys collected data on the availability of curriculum-based arts education activities outside of regular school hours, teaching load of music and visual arts specialists in elementary schools, teacher participation in various professional development activities, the ways in which self-contained classroom teachers teach arts education as part of their instructional program, and teachers' use of formal methods of assessment of students' achievement in the arts. Furthermore, teachers were also asked to provide administrative information such as school level, school enrollment size, school community type, and percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

This study of 1,536 mothers of 5th- and 6th-grade school children in the Detroit metropolitan area provides information on their views on family and school relationships in 1963. The mothers were asked to assess the neighborhood schools, their children's performance in school, and their personal contacts with school officials. Other questions probed the extent of quality time the parents spent with their children, and the time they spent visiting their children's school and the nature of such visits. Additional questions explored respondents' feelings about people of the same social class living in the same neighborhood, and their views on public schools, public assistance, public officials, character development, obedience and respect for authority, child discipline, assignment of home chores to children, and the importance of family stability. Information was also elicited on the type of house respondents lived in, type of neighbors and neighborhood, and their relationship with neighbors and relatives. Demographic variables specify age, sex, marital status, place of birth, education, occupation, number of children in school and their grades, number of children retarded, nationality, personality traits, English proficiency, occupation, family income, unemployment records, religious preferences, length of residence in the Detroit area, and length of time at present residence.

The School Crime Operations Package (School COP) is a software application developed by Abt Associates Inc. with funding from the National Institute of Justice. School COP is a free software package that persons responsible for school safety can use to enter, analyze, and map criminal incidents and school rule violations that occur in and around K-12 schools. School COP organizes information according to the data model that the United States Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics' Crime, Violence, and Discipline Reporting Task Force recommends. The School COP database includes data related to the incident (e.g., date, time, type, location) and to persons involved in the incident (e.g., name, grade, action taken). In other words, School COP is an incident-based system, rather than a student-based system. School COP offers a variety of techniques for analyzing school incidents, including tabular reports, bar graphs, pie charts, and maps. School COP can be installed on any Windows (95 or later) PC. It requires no other software to run, and is usable without formal training.

The origin of this project is an award to Abt Associates Inc. that was funded under the National Institute of Justice's (NIJ) June 1999 "Safe Schools Technology" solicitation, which requested proposals for innovative approaches to using technology to enhance the safety of our nation's elementary and secondary schools. School COP was initially released on CD-ROM in January 2001, and made available at the School COP Web site in June 2001. This Windows version of School COP was generally designed for individuals, for a single school, or for small offices within a school district. Abt Associates Inc. was subsequently awarded another grant in 2001 to enhance the School Crime Operations Package (School COP) and to conduct an evaluation of this software, which is used to enter and analyze incidents that occur on school campuses.

Two types of enhancements were made. First, an enhanced Windows version of School COP was developed that could run on a local- or wide-area network, thus allowing multiple users within a single school or across multiple schools to share a common School COP database. The enhanced Windows version also included two utilities: a Merge application (which enables a district-level School COP database to be constructed by merging several individual databases) and a Viewer application (which enables users to view -- but not add, edit, or delete -- incident information). Second, Web School COP was developed to meet the diverse information needs of persons charged with maintaining safe schools in large school districts, including persons at the school-level (e.g., principals, assistant principals, security officers, and school resource officers), the district-level (e.g., district-level administrators and security staff), as well as possibly parent organizations and state-level administrators. Web School COP was designed to run on either an Intranet (e.g., the school district's private Internet) or a secure third-party Web server, and was built to run on the current Microsoft Web platform.

The evaluation of School COP entailed case studies of six sites to address three main issues: (1) what decision process do sites go through when deciding whether to use School COP, (2) once the site decides to use School COP, what implementation obstacles exist, including those related to installation, customization, and training, and (3) what benefits do sites realize from using School COP.