Empirical evidence suggests children's socio-emotional skills--an important determinant of school achievement--vary according to socioeconomic family background. This study assesses the degree to which differences in socio-emotional skills contribute to the achievement gap between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged children. We used…

There is evidence of the impact of school segregation on students' academic achievement, but it is debated whether the extent of this impact is dependent on students' socioeconomic status, or on their native or non-native condition. This research addresses the problem in Spain, seeking to determine how immigrant and socioeconomic segregation…

Has the gap in average standardized test scores between students from high- and low-income families widened, narrowed, or remained stable over the last 3 decades? The question is important both because the achievement gap is measure of how (un)equally educational opportunities are distributed in the US, and because the disparity in educational…

We estimated the invariance of educational achievement (EA) and learning attitudes (LA) measures across nations. A multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to estimate the invariance of educational achievement and learning attitudes across 55 nations (Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] 2006 data, N = 354,203). The…

Income inequality has been rising in Britain for two decades and wealth is also more unequally distributed now than when New Labour first came to power. Various factors have contributed to this, including education which, according to the PISA 2006 data, has more unequal outcomes in the UK than in all but 2 of the 29 tested countries. Comparative…

In this article, the author compares the ways in which parent-child communication--a major indicator of parental involvement--influences children's educational achievement across 14 countries. Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the author examines the extent to which social class differences in the effect of…