Four-day school weeks are becoming increasingly common in the U.S., but their effect on achievement is not well-understood. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we conduct the most representative student-level analysis to date of the effects of four-day weeks on student achievement and within-year growth using NWEA MAP Growth data. We…

This study reports achievement and growth from kindergarten to 4th grade for three groups of English Learners (ELs): (a) ever-ELs; (b) ELs consistently eligible for service; and (c) EL and Special Education dually-identified students. All three EL groups had lower test scores than never-ELs throughout K-4. In math, ELs grew more than never-ELs…

Youths' development can be positively or negatively impacted by various factors in their internal and external environment. This study investigated the interactive effects of self-regulation and internalizing and externalizing problems on academic achievement (reading and maths) and positive youth development (PYD) across one year. Data were…

Purpose: The purpose of this two-part research was to investigate the effect of remote learning on student progress in elementary education. Part one, presented in this paper, examined achievement differences between learners in a fully remote learning environment and those in a hybrid setting. Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative,…

The current system of education focuses not on preparing students for life success, but on preparing students for academic success. The problem that this study will address is that at-risk students living in poverty combined with limited teacher emotional intelligence, has resulted in low student academic growth regarding mathematics and reading.…

Increased use of achievement scores to measure the impact of school principals on student outcomes has led to increased attention on how best to generate estimates of principal effects. This study joins others in the field in attempting to estimate how K-12 principals affect test score outcomes of students in their schools. Toward this end, this…

Purpose: The purpose of this two-part research was to investigate the effect of remote learning on student progress in elementary education. Part 2, presented in this paper, is a follow-up study to examine how student progression in the two pandemic-induced environments compared to the pre-pandemic conditions. Design/methodology/approach: The…

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between behavioral and emotional characteristics and middle school student achievement across different grades based on a growth modeling approach. Using a total of 1,874 students, target predictor variables (i.e., attention, aggressiveness, behavioral control, social withdrawal,…

While the importance of social-emotional learning for student success is well established, educators and researchers have less knowledge and agreement about which social-emotional skills are most important for students and how these skills distribute across student subgroups. Using a rich longitudinal dataset of 221,840 fourth through seventh…

Prior work has shown that students' reports of their levels of social-emotional skills predict achievement levels and gains, but we have little evidence on whether within-student changes in student reports of social-emotional skills are predictive of changes in theoretically related academic and behavioral outcomes. We use large-scale data from…

The authors investigated the differential effect of retention on the development of academic achievement from grades 1 to 5 on children retained in grade 1 over 6 years. Growth mixture model (GMM) analyses supported the existence of two distinct trajectory groups of retained children for both reading and math among 125 ethnically and…

In this report, student growth percentiles and percentile growth projections/trajectories are introduced as a means of understanding student growth in both normative and a criterion referenced ways. With these values calculated, the author shows how growth data can be utilized in both a norm- and in a criterion-referenced manner to inform…

This randomized controlled field trial examined the efficacy of the Responsive Classroom (RC) approach on student achievement. Schools (n = 24) were randomized into intervention and control conditions; 2,904 children were studied from end of second to fifth grade. Students at schools assigned to the RC condition did not outperform students at…

The ultimate goal of this concurrent embedded mixed-method study was to describe the implementation of Response to Intervention (RTI) and understand the role of Response to Intervention at the fourth-grade elementary school level on the academic performance. This study examined both qualitative and quantitative data. In the qualitative phase, a…

This article presents the results of the 2nd-year evaluation of an after-school program designed for an extended school day program serving African American middle school students in the city of Baltimore, Maryland (ACCESS-West). This study describes the effects of schoolwide reform especially as it relates to single-gender schools, educating…