School learning environments play important roles in students' lives. But when do these relationships form? Previous research on middle school students has identified a strong association between student socio-demographics, school characteristics, and achievement. Yet, few studies have investigated the origins of these associations. This study…

Differential Item Functioning (DIF) is commonly employed to examine measurement bias of test scores. Current approaches to DIF compare item functioning separately for select demographic identities such as gender, racial stratification, and economic status. Examining potential item bias fails to recognize and capture the intersecting configurations…

Gender gaps in mathematics achievement persist in many contexts and when visible, these gaps are paradoxical. Low-stakes measures of mathematics achievement such as grades and study behaviors favor girls, while gaps tend to reverse on assessments/ competitions. We explore whether different impacts of raising performance stakes could be one…

Gender gaps in mathematics achievement persist in many contexts and when visible, these gaps are paradoxical. Low-stakes measures of mathematics achievement such as grades and study behaviors favor girls, while gaps tend to reverse on assessments/competitions. We explore whether different impacts of raising performance stakes could be one…

The purpose of this evaluation was to examine the impact of i-Ready Personalized Instruction on reading achievement, as measured by SBA scores. We compared students in schools using i-Ready Personalized Instruction school-wide (Treatment students) to students who only received i-Ready Diagnostic assessments and who were in schools only partially…

The purpose of this evaluation was to examine the impact of i-Ready Personalized Instruction on math achievement, as measured by SBA scores. We compared "striving learner" students who were assigned to use i-Ready Personalized Instruction (Treatment students) and "striving learner" students assigned to only receive i-Ready…

The purpose of this evaluation was to examine the impact of i-Ready Personalized Instruction on math achievement, as measured by SBA scores. We compared students in schools using i-Ready Personalized Instruction school-wide (Treatment students) and students who only received i-Ready Diagnostic assessments and who were in schools only partially…

The purpose of this collective case study was to examine elementary music teachers' mental health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research questions were: 1) What factors influenced music teachers' mental health and well-being during COVID-19; 2) How did music teachers support their own mental health and well-being during…

Demographic information often proves useful for finding subpopulations in educational data. Unfortunately, it is often not collected in the log files of online learning systems, which serve as one of the primary sources of data for the Educational Data Mining community. Recent work has sought to address this issue by investigating school-level…

The aim of the study is to analyze the 5th grade students' attitudes and self-efficacy for the physical education course that they have come across for the first time which is taught by physical education and sports teachers. Law No. 6287 was issued by the Turkish Grand National Assembly National Education Culture Youth and Sports Commission on…

Thorough assessment of children's physical activity is essential to efficacious interventions to reduce childhood obesity prevalence. The purpose of this study was to examine children's recess physical activity (RPA) patterns of behavior using the Activities of Daily Living-Playground Participation (ADL-PP: Watkinson et al., 2001) instrument.…

The purpose of this study was to develop the Student Knowledge Linking Instrument (SKLI), an inventory for middle grades students that seeks to understand student knowledge construction processes. This study included 461 fifth and sixth grade students and follows from a series of qualitative studies that were used as a foundation for development…

For 30 years, researchers have investigated oral reading fluency as a measure of growth in reading proficiency. Yet, little research has been done with these measures in the context of progress monitoring in Tier 2 systems. First, we document teachers' progress-monitoring decisions on type of passage (on-grade or off-grade) and how often to…

This study describes student perceptions of potential elaborative or generative learning strategies called student knowledge links. This construct was assessed using the Student Knowledge Linking Instrument-Perceptions (SKLIP), a new learning inventory to measure late-elementary student perceptions of the creation of student knowledge links. After…

Teacher value-added models (VAMs) must isolate teachers' contributions to student achievement to be valid. Well-known VAMs use different specifications, however, leaving policymakers with little clear guidance for constructing a valid model. We examine the sensitivity of teacher value-added estimates under different models based on whether they…