The Ready for School, Ready for Life initiative in Guilford County, North Carolina, aims to support interconnected programs and services for young children and their families with the goal of having children enter kindergarten ready for learning. The initiative aims to strengthen connections among existing programs in Guilford County and provide…

There is fear that adolescents have limited control over their digital technology use. The current research examines longitudinal (Study 1) and daily (Study 2) associations between U.S. adolescents' self-control and digital technological impairment and use. Using a large sample (N = 2,104; Wave 1: M[subscript age] = 12.36, 52% female, 57%…

Based on growing evidence of the long-term benefits of enriched early childhood experiences, we evaluate the potential for addressing gender disparities in elementary school through early care and education programs. Specifically, we explore the community-wide effects of two statewide initiatives in North Carolina on gender differences in academic…

In response to chronically low gifted identification rates in the majority of elementary schools among Black and Hispanic/Latino students, the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) launched Nurturing for a Bright Tomorrow (NBT) in Fall 2014. NBT was a multicomponent curricular enhancement program designed to train early elementary school…

Purpose: In an era of unprecedented student measurement and emphasis on data-driven educational decision making, the full potential for using data to target resources to students has yet to be realized. This study explores the utility of machine-learning techniques with large-scale administrative data to identify student dropout risk. Research…

The Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) framework, which uses a systems approach to promote school improvement and support all students in improving academics and behavior using data-based problem-solving, is a key part of the Wake County Public Schools System (WCPSS) Strategic Plan. As of 2017-18, MTSS schools were at the initial stages of MTSS…

This research was designed to examine the difference in student performance between minority magnet school students who live in the residential area for those magnet schools and minority students assigned to a non-magnet residential school. This difference in performance was measured by scale score differences from the North Carolina End-of-Grade…

While instructional time is viewed as crucial to learning, little is known about the effectiveness of reducing absences relative to increasing the number of school days. In this regard, this paper jointly estimates the effect of absences and length of the school calendar on test score performance. Using administrative data from North Carolina…

Prior research has documented that classroom-level variables have a significant effect on student outcomes; however, previous findings have typically focused on average student outcomes and have only recently begun to use hierarchical linear modeling techniques. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of classroom-level variables on the…

This paper constructs a statistical model of learning that suggests a systematic way of measuring the persistence of treatment effects in education. This method is straightforward to implement, allows for comparisons across educational treatments, and can be related to intuitive benchmarks. We demonstrate the methodology using student-teacher…

This article reports on analyses examining contextual influences on parenting with an ethnically and geographically diverse sample of parents (predominantly mothers) raising 387 children (49% ethnic minority; 51% male) in high-risk communities. Parents and children were followed longitudinally from first through tenth grades. Contextual influences…

Recent studies have used increasingly complex methodologies to estimate the effect of peer characteristics--race, poverty, and ability--on student achievement. A paper by Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin using Texas state testing data has received particularly wide attention because it found a large negative effect of school percent black on black math…