Introduction: Despite the assumed importance of school-focused possible identities for academic motivation and outcomes, interventions rarely assess the effect of the intervention on possible identities. This may be due to difficulty coding open-ended text at scale but leaves open a number of questions: 1) how do school-focused possible identities…

Introduction: Despite the assumed importance of school-focused possible identities for academic motivation and outcomes, interventions rarely assess the effect of intervention on possible identities. This may be due to difficulty coding open-ended text at scale but leaves open a number of questions: 1) how do school-focused possible identities…

We estimate the longer-run effects of attending an effective high school (one that improves a combination of test scores, survey measures of socio-emotional development and behaviours in 9th grade) for students who are more versus less "educationally advantaged" (i.e., likely to attain more years of education based on 8th-grade…

Previous studies about ELs have reported data on active English Learners--defined as those students who have not yet reached proficiency on a state English test--at a specific moment in time. This study, for the first time, analyzed the long-term trajectories of 18,000 CPS students who began kindergarten as ELs and followed their progress all the…

The present study investigates the relationship between childhood placement in special education and adult well-being among 1,377 low-income, minority children participating in the Chicago Longitudinal Study. Roughly 16% of the sample received special education services in Grades 1 to 8. After accounting for sociodemographic factors and early…

In many ways standards-based school reform is at a crossroads. On one side, the movement has made tremendous strides. The Common Core State Standards Initiative, known simply as Common Core, is now strongly established in more than 40 states. Many teachers believe that the new, higher academic standards have helped them improve instruction. And,…

Improving the long-term life outcomes of disadvantaged youth remains a top policy priority in the United States, although identifying successful interventions for adolescents--particularly males--has proven challenging. This paper reports results from a large randomized controlled trial of an intervention for disadvantaged male youth grades 7-10…