Seventh- and 8th-grade students in a within-teacher randomized control study read from visual-syntactic formatted text for 44 min per week over the course of 1 year. On the annual state assessment, we found small statistically significant improvements on the overall English Language Arts scaled score (ES = 0.05, p < 0.05) and the writing…

Whether students of color are more or less likely to be identified as having disabilities than similarly situated students who are White in U.S. states with histories of de jure and de facto racial segregation is currently unknown. Unadjusted analyses of large samples of students attending elementary and middle schools in the U.S. South yielded…

Federal legislation and policy increasingly seek to address minority overrepresentation in special education due to concerns that U.S. schools are misidentifying children as disabled based on their race or ethnicity. Yet whether and to what extent this is occurring is currently in dispute. We estimated racial disparities in disability…

We examined the age of onset, over-time dynamics, and mechanisms underlying science achievement gaps in U.S. elementary and middle schools. To do so, we estimated multilevel growth models that included as predictors children's own general knowledge, reading and mathematics achievement, behavioral self-regulation, sociodemographics, other child-…

We examined the age of onset, over-time dynamics, and mechanisms underlying science achievement gaps in U.S. elementary and middle schools. To do so, we estimated multilevel growth models that included as predictors children's own general knowledge, reading and mathematics achievement, behavioral self-regulation, sociodemographics, other child-…

We sought to identify which kindergarten children are simultaneously at risk of moderate or severe symptomatology in both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and conduct disorder (CD) as adolescents. These risk factor estimates have not been previously available. We conducted multinomial logistic regression analyses of multiinformant…

We analyzed two nationally representative, longitudinal data sets of U.S. children to identify risk factors for persistent mathematics difficulties (PMD). Results indicated that children from low socioeconomic households are at elevated risk of PMD at 48 and 60 months of age, as are children with cognitive delays, identified developmental delays…

In light of the strong correlation between Kindergarten performance and later cognitive and achievement outcomes, this paper investigates the link between student achievement and the educational background characteristics of Kindergarten teachers. This study will utilize the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), a…

Coursework-mastery test scores for all middle school students in a school district were used to test the narrowly meritocratic hypothesis that course-grade differentials for gender, ethnicity, and poverty groups can be accounted for by the differential coursework mastery of these groups. Samples ranged from 1,124 to 8,381 seventh graders and…

Tests a cultural resources/social interaction model of gatekeeping by school teachers using data for seventh and eighth grade students in a city school district. Results indicate informal academic standards by which teachers reward general skills, habits, and styles, accounting for course grade differentials observed for gender, ethnicity, and…