This study evaluates techniques to identify high-quality teachers. Since tenure restricts dismissals of experienced teachers, schools must predict productivity and dismiss those expected to perform ineffectively prior to tenure receipt. Many states rely on evaluation scores to guide these personnel decisions without considering other dimensions of…

Children with poor reading comprehension tend to have oral language weaknesses, suggesting that poor language in the early years is a proximal cause of later reading comprehension difficulties. Yet, longitudinal studies have not succeeded in reliably predicting which children go on to have comprehension weaknesses (CW), and evidence comprises…

The increasing rate of permanent school closures in U.S. public school districts presents unprecedented challenges for administrators and communities alike. This study develops an early-warning indicator model to predict mass closure events -- defined as a district closing at least 10% of its schools -- five years in advance. Leveraging…

Bias-based (also called identity-based) harassment refers specifically to a subset of peer victimization that targets a person's identity, such as their gender identity, religion, immigration status, sexual orientation, race, or ethnicity. Research indicates that bias-based harassment is a particularly devastating form of victimization that has an…

Quasiregular orthographies such as English contain substantial ambiguities between orthography and phonology that force developing readers to acquire flexibility during decoding of unfamiliar words, a skill referred to as a "set for variability" (SfV). The ease with which a child can disambiguate the mismatch between the decoded form of…

Early warning systems (EWS) using analytical tools that have been trained against prior years' data, can reliably predict dropout risk in individual students so that educators may intervene early to help avert this from happening. Risk profiles for dropouts aren't always useful since students often do not conform to the profiles. Researchers with…

In this paper, we examine whether early warning signals from accounting courses (such as early engagement and early formative performance) are predictive of first-year progression outcomes, and whether this data is more predictive than personal data (such as gender and prior achievement). Using a machine learning approach, results from a sample of…

Despite its proven success in various fields such as engineering, business, and healthcare, human-machine collaboration in education remains relatively unexplored. This study aims to highlight the advantages of human-machine collaboration for improving the efficiency and accuracy of decision-making processes in educational settings. High school…

Mediation analysis is widely applied in various fields of science, such as psychology, epidemiology, and sociology. In practice, many psychological and behavioral phenomena are dynamic, and the corresponding mediation effects are expected to change over time. However, most existing mediation methods assume a static mediation effect over time,…

Mediation analysis is widely applied in various fields of science, such as psychology, epidemiology, and sociology. In practice, many psychological and behavioral phenomena are dynamic, and the corresponding mediation effects are expected to change over time. However, most existing mediation methods assume a static mediation effect over time,…

Universal screening for social, emotional, and behavioral risk is an important method for identifying students in need of additional or targeted support (Eklund and Dowdy in School Mental Health 6:40-49, 2014). Research is needed to explore how potential bias may be implicated in universal screening. We investigated student demographics as…

The purpose of this study was to investigate possible predictive relationships between interval identification and melodic dictation performance on tasks where students identify short pitch spans after a brief tonicization. College musicians (N = 35) completed an interval identification test and a series of melodic dictation tasks. Results…

For over 100 years, youth mentoring has grown to be an evidenced based prevention strategy for youth, demonstrating positive youth outcomes through strong relationships with caring adults. While trusting relationships are the mainstay of the positive impacts achieved through mentoring, the difficulty in recruiting volunteer adults has not met the…

School improvement research has insufficiently considered the importance of intervening in schools with declining academic performance. Fields such as engineering and medicine have prioritized predicting decline to save structures or patients before they are in peril. Unfortunately, in education, school improvement policies and interventions are…

When working with students with disabilities who are prone to trauma, it is vital for teachers to be able to identify and manage trauma. Given that students with disabilities have varying levels of trauma, this study assessed teachers' self-reported competence toward trauma identification and trauma-informed practice among students with…