Using statewide administrative data from a sample of children enrolled in public prekindergarten (pre-K) programs in Massachusetts, I examined heterogeneity in children's absenteeism patterns from pre-K to Grade 3 and linked these patterns to their Grade 3 academic outcomes. After latent class growth analysis, six absenteeism patterns emerged. The…

National interest is growing in Integrated Student Support (ISS) interventions, which offer schools systematic ways to reduce barriers to learning. The present study exploits the random component embedded within the school assignment system of a large urban school district to estimate the effect of schools providing ISS on student academic…

This study investigated the effects of the Leader in Me (LiM), a social-emotional learning program implemented in thousands of schools. A mixed-method design included (1) a collective case study in four diverse, high-implementing elementary schools and (2) a post hoc quasi-experiment using propensity score 1:3 matching of 117 LiM and 348 non-LiM…

Scholars have examined the effects of same-gender teachers on student achievement, but the findings are mixed. In this study, we use 7 years of administrative data from students in elementary and middle schools (i.e., Grades 3 through 8) in Indiana to test links between gender matching and student achievement. We find that female teachers are…

Over the past decade, U.S. immigration enforcement policies have increasingly targeted unauthorized immigrants residing in the U.S. interior, many of whom are the parents of U.S.-citizen children. Heightened immigration enforcement may affect student achievement through stress, income effects, or student mobility. I use one immigration enforcement…

The Stanford Educational Data Archive (SEDA) is the first data set to allow comparisons of district academic achievement and growth from Grades 3 to 8 across the United States, shining a light on the distribution of educational opportunities. This study describes a convergent validity analysis of the SEDA growth estimates in mathematics and…

Propensity score matching was used to compare third-grade test scores in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies for children who had and had not participated in Georgia's Pre-K 4 years earlier. After matching, each group included 46,262 children (mean age 8.36 years in third grade). In all subject areas, children who had…

We estimate relative achievement effects of the four most commonly adopted elementary mathematics textbooks in the fall of 2008 and fall of 2009 in California. Our findings indicate that one book, Houghton Mifflin's "California Math," is more effective than the other three, raising student achievement by 0.05 to 0.08 student-level…