This research brief examines the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student achievement and progress toward academic recovery. Using data from 6.7 million U.S. public school students currently in grades 3-8, the study examined academic gains in the 2022-23 school year relative to pre-pandemic years. It also tracked the gap in…

Inequitable learning opportunities are a leading contributor to the persistent literacy achievement gaps evident between historically marginalized students and their more affluent peers. This study investigated the impact of a community school reform effort in an urban middle school. The community school initiative focused on meeting the complex…

There is growing interest in the relation between the racial achievement gap and the racial discipline gap. However, few studies have examined this relation at the national level. This study combines data from the Stanford Education Data Archive and the Civil Rights Data Collection and employs a district fixed effects analysis to examine whether…

This brief continues ongoing research by NWEA® examining the degree to which the COVID-19 pandemic, and its associated school closures, influenced student learning. Prior research focused on math and reading and found that the pandemic's negative impact steadily accumulated during the 2020-2021 school year, with significant disparities in…

This study explores the impact of attending optional professional learning events on the critical consciousness development of Ready to Learn (RtL) mentors over the course of one program year. Ready to Learn is an out of school time math tutoring and mentoring program that seeks to address opportunity gaps in math learning for middle school…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a significant difference exists in academic achievement between all students and economically disadvantaged students when compared by socioeconomic levels in the North Carolina middle grades learner (as measured by reading and mathematics standardized tests). It also sought to determine whether…

Important educational policy decisions, like whether to shorten or extend the school year, often require accurate estimates of how much students learn during the year. Yet, related research relies on a mostly untested assumption: that growth in achievement is linear throughout the entire school year. We examine this assumption using a dataset…

This study examined data from the Institute of Education Sciences' evaluation of school-based mentoring (SBM) programs to establish a causal relationship between SBM and reduction of the academic achievement gap between African American and White middle school students. Participation in SBM improved the academic performance of all students. The…

The purpose of this descriptive case study was to review practices aimed at improving literacy outcomes for multilingual language learners (MLLs). This was done by studying the internal coherence practices of a superintendent in Community School District 100 (a pseudonym), an urban school district in the northeast region of the United States.…

This is a longitudinal study of the change in the academic achievement gap between African American and European American students from elementary to high schools with large administrative data from a school district in the United States. Analysis of variance between eight tracks of students defined by the school environment of isolated schools or…

Children and adolescents from low-income families now comprise a majority of public school students nationally. As the number of students from low-income backgrounds increases, so does the achievement gap between them and their wealthier peers. This phenomenological qualitative study examined a national sample of high-achieving, low-income middle…

The rapid expansion of school choice is restructuring public education in the United States. This study examines associations between charter and magnet school enrollment, White-Black and White-Hispanic segregation, and test score gaps at the district level from 2009 to 2015 in third to eighth grade using the Stanford Education Data Archive and…

This is the technical index for the research brief "Education's Long COVID: 2022-23 Achievement Data Reveal Stalled Progress toward Pandemic Recovery." Using data from 6.7 million U.S. public school students currently in grades 3-8, the study examined academic gains in the 2022-23 school year relative to pre-pandemic years. It also…

The educational disparities that can be found in the English language learning outcomes of middle school students in Austria have gone relatively unexplored in international research. National studies have tended to attribute lower educational outcomes either to students' socioeconomic status or their multilingual background. In this article, we…

Exclusionary discipline practices (EDPs) have been linked to poor academic performance and student dropout rates. Research shows that students suspended, expelled, or placed in alternate learning environments fare worse academically than their peers. This qualitative case study explores the experiences of classroom teachers in Northwest Louisiana…