Push and Pull Factors for Female Involvement in Gangs and Collateral Involvement in Sex Trafficking: Systematic Review of Research
Until recently, research on the roles of females in gangs has been minimal because violence and gang membership have historically been thought to be male-dominated phenomena. This paper addresses the knowledge gap by focusing specifically on females and the unique factors contributing to their gang involvement.
As part of a project by WestEd’s Justice and Prevention Research Center in partnership with the American Institutes for Research (AIR), the paper presents a systematic review of research on factors that “push” or “pull” females toward gang involvement. The factors identified by the research include peer and family environment, victimization, neighborhood and school influences, and sex trafficking involvement.
The paper helps school staff and administrators consider prevention strategies to dissuade all students from future gang involvement. Given the overlap between various forms of prior sexual abuse and female gang involvement, close coordination between program developers, implementation staff, and community providers who support victims of sexual crimes may be important to best support victims and deter them from future gang involvement.
Additionally, community prevention strategies should consider a strong collaboration with schools to identify and intervene with current gang members and prevent younger siblings from future involvement. The findings also suggest a need for further research on gender-specific interventions to prevent female gang involvement.
From the Brink of Closure: Key Factors in One Charter School's Successful Turnaround
Perry Street Preparatory Public Charter School (Perry Street) in Washington, DC, is one of the few charter schools to conduct a comprehensive improvement effort and do so independent of another operator. Instead, Perry Street’s board chose to work with a third-party turnaround partner to initiate, support, and build capacity to sustain change.
Recent results indicate the turnaround has been largely successful. Perry Street moved from being one of DC’s lowest performing schools to one of the highest performing in five years. And an independent evaluation conducted by WestEd showed the turnaround efforts resulted in significant, positive impacts to student achievement compared to similar students at other charters and traditional schools.
Written intentionally for school leaders, board members, and authorizers, this report and the video below share Perry Street’s story of comprehensive improvement and describes the necessary conditions for turnaround success.
Key Takeaways
Turnaround takes time with urgent focus on goals. Turnaround is a multi-year undertaking that requires everyone to work with urgency, dedication, and focused effort in order to make continuous progress toward goals.
Turnaround requires a systemic approach. At the heart of the improvement effort at Perry Street was the transformation of processes and systems, which enabled educators to focus on meeting students’ needs. This required a comprehensive overhaul of the core components of Perry Street: leadership/governance, human resources/talent, instruction, culture, and fiscal/operations.
Turnaround requires building capacities to drive and sustain change. Perry Street collaborated with its partner, TenSquare, to build the capacity of the board, leadership, and staff to operate and sustain the new processes and systems in the ways their students needed.
Data-Driven School Improvement with WestEd's Four Domains CALL System
This archived webinar is the second in a four-part series designed to help school, district, and state administrators implement the Four Domains for Rapid School Improvement, a framework developed by WestEd’s Center on School Turnaround.
Learn about WestEd’s new Four Domains CALL System, an online tool that identifies a school or district’s unique leadership opportunities and challenges.
CALL utilizes a multi-source comprehensive survey to assess core leadership practices distributed across an organization and the results are used to create a targeted action plan that supports professional growth and school effectiveness.
The Four Domains CALL System delivers:
- Domain-specific feedback on your schools’ strengths and opportunities for improvement that will inform planning and monitoring
- A shared understanding of excellence and the required leadership skills and knowledge necessary to achieve improvements
- Data comparisons against national norms and previous school-level CALL administrations
- Tools to measure ongoing progress
Who Will BenefitÂ
- School & District Administrators
- State School Improvement Directors
Presenters
- Kyle Konold, Executive Director, The Delta Academy
- Lenay Dunn, Senior Research Associate, Center on School Turnaround at WestEd
- Mark Blitz, Project Director for Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning, WCEPS
- Joseph Sassone, former Director of Development for School and District Services, Comprehensive School Assistance Program at WestEd
- Bob Rosenfeld, Senior Engagement Manager, Comprehensive School Assistance Program at WestEd
Watch a video about the WestEd Four Domains CALL System.
Filling a Need: Professional Development for Charter School Teachers
Teachers and administrators in independent charter schools tend to wear multiple hats and have enormous workloads. Most independent charters are small. Many are geographically isolated. And a good number are struggling financially; just meeting the monthly payroll can be difficult.
All too often, opportunities for high-quality professional development in this context are minimal or nonexistent.
WestEd’s Charter School Teachers Online (CSTO) project is working to advance professional development opportunities for charter school teachers.
Moving professional development online is key to CSTO’s approach to overcoming the geographic and cost constraints of reaching charter school teachers. CSTO builds on an extensive online library of education resources from another WestEd project, Doing What Works (DWW). School districts can access the material free of charge at the DWW website (www.dww.ed.gov).
CSTO is developing and facilitating eight online professional development courses, each spanning four to seven weeks. Five of the courses are designed to give charter school teachers strategies they can use to boost middle and high school students’ reading comprehension.
The courses cover topics ranging from ways to more effectively lead discussions on textbook material and teach new vocabulary in the classrooms, to strategies for teaching to the Common Core State Standards for reading.
Download this article to read more about CSTO.
The Achievement Progress of English Learner Students in Arizona
With states increasingly committed to better understanding and supporting the academic progress of their English learner students, this REL West study offers insights into how these students progressed in the state of Arizona over six school years.
This study followed three cohorts of English learner students in kindergarten, grade 3, and grade 6 from 2006/07 through 2011/12 to assess their English proficiency and track their academic progress in English language arts and math content knowledge.
Key Findings
- English learner students in lower grades did better than students in higher grades on subject matter tests
- English learner students who were eligible for special education services generally had the lowest passing rates on all tests
- English learner students who started the study at lower English language proficiency (ELP) levels generally had lower passing rates on all tests than students at the higher ELP levels
- English learner students who were eligible for the school lunch program scored lower on all tests than their peers who were not eligible
- Male English learner students had lower passing rates than their female peers on the English language proficiency and English language arts tests, but scored about the same — mostly slightly higher and sometimes slightly lower — on the math test
The Achievement Progress of English Learner Students in Nevada
With states increasingly committed to better understanding and supporting the academic progress of their English learner students, this REL West study offers insights into how these students progressed in the state of Nevada over six school years.
The study followed cohorts of English learner students — kindergarten, grades 3, and grades 6 — in Nevada’s two largest school districts, Clark County School District and Washoe County School District, from 2006/07 through 2011/12. Researchers assessed English learners’ progress in English proficiency and reading and math content knowledge.
Key Findings
- English learner students in lower grades did better than students in higher grades on subject matter tests
- English learner students who were eligible for special education services generally had the lowest passing rates on all tests
- English learner students who started the study at lower English language proficiency (ELP) levels generally had lower passing rates on all tests than students at the higher ELP levels
- English learner students who were eligible for the school lunch program scored lower on all tests than their peers who were not eligible
- Male English learner students had lower passing rates than their female peers on the English language proficiency and English language arts tests, but scored about the same — mostly slightly higher and sometimes slightly lower — on the math test
The Achievement Progress of English Learner Students
This document provides an overview of three REL West reports that examine the academic achievement of English learner students in kindergarten, grade 3, and grade 6 from 2006/07 through 2011/12 in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.
The reports focus specifically on students’ progress in English fluency and in mastering core academic content in English language arts and math.
Key Findings
- English learner students in lower grades did better than students in higher grades on subject matter tests
- English learner students who were eligible for special education services generally had the lowest passing rates on all tests
- English learner students who started the study at lower English language proficiency (ELP) levels generally had lower passing rates on all tests than students at the higher ELP levels
- English learner students who were eligible for the school lunch program scored lower on all tests than their peers who were not eligible
- Male English learner students had lower passing rates than their female peers on the English language proficiency and English language arts tests, but scored about the same — mostly slightly higher and sometimes slightly lower — on the math test
Teacher Demographics and Evaluation: A Descriptive Study in a Large Urban District
Some public concern had been expressed that racial/ethnic minority teachers may be more likely than other teachers to be identified for possible dismissal based on a lower performance rating.
Using data from one urban public school district, this REL Northeast & Islands study examines teacher summative performance evaluation ratings disaggregated by teacher characteristics, including race/ethnicity, age, and gender.
Key findings based on an analysis of teacher ratings from three years (2012/13–2014/15) include:
- The characteristics of teachers in each of the three years included a disproportionately large percentage of Black teachers, teachers age 50 and older, and male teachers rated below proficient compared with the percentage of those demographics in the population of teachers with a summative performance rating
- In all three years the percentage of teachers with a summative performance rating who were rated below proficient was higher among Black teachers than among White teachers, although the gap was smaller in 2013/14 and 2014/15
- In all three years the percentage of teachers with a summative performance rating who were rated below proficient was higher among teachers age 50 and older than among teachers younger than age 50
- In all three years the difference in the percentage of male and female teachers with a summative performance rating who were rated below proficient was approximately 5 percentage points or less
- The percentage of teachers who improved their rating during all three year-to-year comparisons did not vary by race/ethnicity, age, or gender
These findings suggest the need for further research on the potential causes of the gaps identified, as well as strategies for ameliorating them.
The Achievement Progress of English Learner Students in Utah
With states increasingly committed to better understanding and supporting the academic progress of their English learner students, this REL West study offers insights into how these students progressed in the state of Utah from 2006/07 through 2011/12.
This study followed cohorts of English learner students — kindergarten, grades 3, and grades 6 — to assess their progress in English proficiency and English language arts and math content knowledge.
Key Findings
- English learner students in lower grades did better than students in higher grades on subject matter tests
- English learner students who were eligible for special education services generally had the lowest passing rates on all tests
- English learner students who started the study at lower English language proficiency (ELP) levels generally had lower passing rates on all tests than students at the higher ELP levels
- English learner students who were eligible for the school lunch program scored lower on all tests than their peers who were not eligible
- Male English learner students had lower passing rates than their female peers on the English language proficiency and English language arts tests, but scored about the same — mostly slightly higher and sometimes slightly lower — on the math test
Evaluation of the Silicon Valley Research Practice Partnership for Computational Thinking and Positive IdentityÂ
In 2016, former President Barack Obama endorsed expanded funding for computer science education in the nation’s secondary schools. State agencies, industry leaders, and educators embraced the challenge eagerly, knowing the future health of the U.S. economy would rely on a workforce that is equipped with skills in computer science and computational thinking. Despite the need, inequities exist between who is receiving high-quality computer science instruction and who is not.
In California, the Silicon Valley Research Practice Partnership for Computational Thinking and Positive Identity for Computer Science (SVRPP) felt that cultural stereotypes were prohibitive in encouraging underrepresented female students to pursue a career in computer science or engineering. The SVRPP received a Computer Science for All grant from the National Science Foundation for April 2021 through March 2024. This 3-year grant provided the opportunity for the SVRPP to form a research and practice partnership in order to increase computational thinking and positive identity for Latina students in grades 4 and 5.
This report covers the impact of the SVRPP during the 2022–23 school year and the first semester of the 2023–24 school year:
- Computational thinking: The SVRPP had a statistically significant impact on Latina students’ skill and understanding of abstraction in grades 4 and 5 during both school years.
- Positive identity: During the 2023–24 school year, Latina students showed a statistically significant growth in their perceptions of culturally responsive pedagogy and their identification with math. During the 2022–23 school year, no statistically significant growth was observed in Latina students’ ratings in these two areas.
- Assessment performance: Latina students taught by SVRPP teachers scored higher on the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium standards-based math assessment than did Latina students taught by non-SVRPP teachers. This difference, while not statistically significant, shows a positive trend in academic achievement that may be influenced by enriched educational support.
- Teachers’ knowledge: During the 2022–23 school year, teachers’ culturally responsive pedagogy and computational thinking knowledge improved from the start of their participation in the SVRPP to after their participation in the SVRPP for one school year. The difference was statistically significant. During the 2023–24 school year, a similar trend was observed, though not statistically significant.