• promote new research in areas of evidence-based education,
• promote new research across disciplines,
• encourage graduate students to focus their future professional work in this subject area
• disseminate research findings for application in "real world" settings, further bridging the gap between research and practice.

1. Does the use of Check & Connect result in student improvement on school engagement factors?
   • Prediction: The study predicts that the use of Check and Connect will result in student improvement on school engagement factors.
2. What modifications will school personnel make to Check & Connect?
   • Prediction: If any modifications are made, they will be to reduce the amount of contact that student services personnel have with the students to accommodate busy schedules.
3. Do school personnel who implement Check & Connect consider it to be an acceptable program for increasing student engagement?
   • Prediction: School personnel will consider it an acceptable program for increasing engagement.
4. Do students who receive Check & Connect consider it to be an acceptable program?
   • Prediction: Students will consider it an acceptable program for increasing engagement.

• decrease in truancy,
• decrease in dropout rates,
• increase in accrual of credits,
• increase in school completion, and
• impact on literacy.

Name: Benjamin Solomon

Title: A  Multi-­level  Investigation  of  Teacher  Instructional  Practices  and  the   Use  of  the  Responsive  Classroom  Curriculum 

Research Proposal: The emergence of school-based behaviorally orientated prevention programs have caused a reaction from the research and practicing community to establish quality indicators to determine if practices are actually effective. Several organizations have offered comprehensive rubrics to evaluate the quality of prevention programming. The Wing Institute (2010), in their Road Map for Evidence-Based Practice, stated that different standards exist for programs to be deemed to have efficacy, be deemed effective, or ready for implementation. The study proposes to test whether the professional development sequence for teachers, Responsive Classroom (RC), as used in a typical setting, is effective in increasing student achievement over the course of one academic year. RC is a research-based approach that offers practical strategies for bringing together social and academic learning derived from and consistent with the goals of Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS).

Hypothesis or Questions:

1. How does initial investment in classroom organization play out as a cost-benefit analysis across the school year?
   • Is Response Classroom cost effective?
2. Is the RC method a unique and effective tool for behavioral prevention and social/emotional growth?
   • How do we know if a prevention program works?
   • How much evidence is required before a program should be disseminated?
3. Will the effects of RC generalize across behavioral constructs not previously measured, including direct observation of teacher instruction practices?
   • Will the study replicate results of other studies across academic and social domains controlling for nesting effects of students within classrooms and using multiple instruments?
4. What contextual variables moderate the effects of RC?
   • For what populations?
   • How do variables such as SES effect the effectiveness of the program?
5. Can instructional behavior of the teacher be observed and quantified in a reliable and valid manner and used to answer the above questions?
   • How does RC change teacher behavior?

Title: Preparing Teachers to Train Parents in the Use of Evidence-based Tutoring Strategies for Reading Fluency

Hypothesis or Questions:

1. Can teachers train parents with fidelity to use evidence-based tutoring strategies following minimal training (i.e., video modeling plus practice with peers)? It was hypothesized that teachers would show improvements in their parent training skills and deliver training with high fidelity, as they learned new information and had an opportunity to practice implementation of the strategies with a peer.
   
2. Can parents tutor their children with high fidelity following video plus practice and feedback delivered by trained teachers? It was hypothesized that parents would use tutoring strategies more effectively as a function of having been trained by teachers and would implement the tutoring program with high fidelity.
   
3. Does students’ oral reading fluency (ORF) improve and maintain when parents implement tutoring strategies? It was hypothesized that students’ ORF would increase during tutoring because the tutoring provided students with additional opportunities to practice reading with guidance and feedback.
   
4. Do teachers, parents, and students rate the training methods and procedures and the tutoring strategies as acceptable? It was hypothesized that teachers, parents, and students would rate the procedures and strategies as acceptable because the strategies have been shown to be effective and require a short amount of time (i.e., 20 minutes) to implement.

Research Proposal: The outcome of this research is to decrease problem behaviors and increase appropriate behaviors in the classroom in order to increase overall academic and behavior success. Secondly, the study wishes to answer the question of the efficacy the FBA process as an intervention in early childhood.

1. Can typical function-based assessments (FBA) procedures (descriptive indirect and direct methods) produce verifiable hypotheses of function when performed with pre-school children in a Head Start program?
2. Is there a functional relationship between type of intervention procedures (function-based and non-function-based) and observed change in problem behavior?

Name: Ramón B. Barreras

Research Proposal: The primary purpose of the present is study is to evaluate the treatment validity of the social skill-deficit model for the development and implementation of Social Skills Training (SST) for adolescents who are at-risk for developing emotional and/or behavioral disorders (EBD). The hypothesis is that the social skill-deficit model will lead to improved social skills and decreases in competing problem behaviors that will be maintained long after the intervention has been terminated. In addition, such findings will further enhance and contribute to the extant literature regarding the most effective methodology to assess and deliver SST.

Hypothesis or Questions:

1. Is a non-skill deficit based social skills training package an effective intervention for adolescent students at-risk for EBD?
2. Is social skills training more effective when matched to the type of social skill deficit (e.g., acquisition versus performance deficit) than a non-skill deficit based social skills training package?
3. Are the hypotheses regarding students social skills deficits (acquisition and performance), as determined by the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), confirmed through a functional behavioral assessment?
4. Does social skills training based on the social-skill deficit model lead to generalized and maintained performance for students?