Investigating variables associated with the school success and educational resilience of urban youth of color should be a high priority because of the persistent achievement gap in the United States. The current study examined individual and peer factors' relation to the school engagement of 132 seventh- and eighth-grade students from a diverse…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices, the Naglieri Nonverbal Abilities Test (NNAT), and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) in selecting for ethnically diverse students who may be gifted. The participants of the study were 175 students enrolled in Grades 3-5 and Grade 8 in a…

The Council of the Great City Schools has prepared this eighth edition of "Beating the Odds" to give the nation another look at how inner-city schools are performing on the academic goals and standards set by the states. This analysis examines student achievement in math and reading through spring 2007. It also measures achievement gaps between…

This report examines trends in student achievement for public school students using both state assessment data and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Recent trends on state assessments from 2004-05 through 2006-07 are examined in 30 states that had consistent assessments in place over this period and longer-term trends on the…

This is the 11th annual report on conditions affecting the Racine Unified School District (RUSD). Analysis continues to focus on the long-term historical trends in RUSD, comparing RUSD to nine peer school districts and the State of Wisconsin. RUSD peer districts are Wisconsin's largest (Milwaukee Public Schools are not included) and their…

Students demonstrated their reading comprehension skills by responding to questions about various types of reading passages on the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessment. Reading abilities were assessed in the contexts of literary experience, gaining information, and performing a task. A nationally…

This study compares middle schools to K-8 schools, as well as to newly formed K-8 schools that are part of a K-8 conversion policy. The outcome is student achievement, and our sample includes 40,883 eighth-grade students from 95 schools across five cohorts. The analysis uses multilevel modeling to account for student, cohort, and school-level…

"Education Week" provides a weekly review of state and federal K-12 education policy news. This special issue of "Education Week" includes the following articles: (1) Below the Surface; (2) School Leaders Seek Innovative Solutions to Improve Student Performance (Steven Dowling); (3) A Decade of Effort (Lynn Olson); (4) A Small Wonder (Debra…

St. Martin Hall, a demonstration school affiliated with Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas, collaborated with the Harry Jersig Center to test students for speech and language difficulties or hearing loss. A significant number of the children were from economically disadvantaged homes. Most of the children were Hispanic.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of the grades 6-8 version of DISCOVER, a performance-based assessment, and investigate its effectiveness in identifying gifted minority students. Questions examined the alignment between DISCOVER and Gardner's (1983) theory of multiple intelligences (MI) and assessed gender and ethnic…

The 12th iteration of the International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2019) is organized under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society in Montreal, Canada. The theme of this year's conference is EDM in Open-Ended Domains. As EDM has matured it has increasingly been applied to open-ended and ill-defined tasks…

This report summarizes statistics on access and attainment in higher education, focusing particularly on community college students, using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), which follows a nationally representative sample of individuals who were eighth graders in the spring of 1988. A sample of these…

The Education-Drug Use Connection focused primarily on a nationwide sample of adolescents, first surveyed when they were nearing the end of 8th grade in the years 1991, 1992, and 1993, and followed biennially for eight years thereafter. (Full details on samples and methods are provided in Bachman et al., 2008, and are not repeated here.) The…

The purpose of this study was to compare the academic achievement of 543 urban 4th- (n=291) and 8th- (n=252) grade students who attended Montessori or traditional education programs. The majority of the sample consisted of minority students (approximately 53 percent), and was considered low income (approximately 67 percent). Students who attended…

Part of the third-largest school district in the nation, 77 percent of Chicago's nearly 427,000 public school students are poor, as defined by eligibility for participation in free or reduced-cost lunch programs. Many are members of minorities; many have limited proficiency in English. To make a successful transition to college--even to graduate…