The conventional view is that the origin of the black-white student achievement gap can be traced to sociocultural and socioeconomic factors, plus variation in parental style and parental investment, and is maintained and perpetuated by variation in school and teacher quality. This article rejects the conventional view, drawing upon the results of…

Existing research on "school effectiveness" indicates that differences at the school level contribute significantly towards variation in student outcomes; however, less is known about the effectiveness of schooling in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This paper addresses this gap using quantitative analysis of data from two…

Because the pandemic exacerbated chronic absenteeism in many parts of the country, the need to understand how schools can improve student attendance has never been greater. Accordingly, this study breaks new ground by examining high schools' contributions to attendance after accounting for individual students' prior absenteeism and other…

States across the country are developing systems for evaluating school principals on the basis of student achievement growth. A common approach is to hold principals accountable for the value added of their schools--that is, schools' contributions to student achievement growth. In theory, school value added can reflect not only principals'…