The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has become the world's largest comparative assessment of academic achievement. While hundreds of studies have examined the factors predicting student achievement in PISA, a comprehensive overview of the main predictors has yet to be completed. To address this gap, we conducted a systematic…

A high school education prepares young people to participate positively in the economy and in civic life, among other positive life outcomes. However, nearly one in five American high school students does not graduate from high school on time, if ever. Progress has been made on understanding why students fail to complete high school and on raising…

Investigates cross-level mediational and moderational community and family influences on adolescent depressive symptoms. Findings suggested that the influence of the parent-child relationship on adolescent depressive symptoms is weaker in more adverse communities than in less adverse communities. Findings underscore the importance of placing…

This commentary on Enrique Gracia's (2003) article, "Social Isolation from Communities and Child Maltreatment: A Cross-Cultural Perspective," discusses the relationship of neighborhood context to child maltreatment. The difficulty of sorting out individual and contextual factors is emphasized, along with the problem of clearly defining the unit of…

This literature review summarizes and analyzes the current literature on variables predicting high school dropping out and the relationship between those variables and language minority youth (defined as those who are national origin minorities by birth and who speak, in varying degrees, languages other than English). After the introduction, which…