The students in the US are positioned in the middle among the nations on the international tests of academic achievement. This moderate achievement is a matter of great concern as it reflects the output of the US education system, as well as the input, in terms of human resource, available to the market. One way of probing this moderate…

This paper reports the performance of 30 rising seventh-grade girls on a task in which they were asked to order four fractions from least to greatest. Less than three-fifths attained correct answers. The performance gap was widest between students who attended Title I schools and those who did not, the latter being much more likely to attain…

The purpose of this study was to determine if reading achievement of students from high-poverty US schools differs as a function of participation in summer tutoring versus access to books. Data from 100 at-risk youth who participated in tutoring (n = 45) or received self-selected books (n = 55) indicated significant gains for students in both…

Brief, targeted self-affirmation writing exercises have recently been offered as a way to reduce racial achievement gaps, but evidence about their effects in educational settings is mixed, leaving ambiguity about the likely benefits of these strategies if implemented broadly. A key limitation in interpreting these mixed results is that they come…

Research on gender achievement gaps shows they exist, and are largest in the tails of the distribution, starting as early as Kindergarten and persisting through eighth grade. In mathematics, studies find small average gender achievement gaps and larger systematically male-favoring gaps among the highest achieving students. This paper seeks to…

The purpose of this study was to determine if SuccessMaker Reading had an effect on at-risk students when used with a Language Arts course. SuccessMaker Reading is a web-based system that provides reading skills practice that align with state standards. The sample of this study consisted of seventh (2019) and eighth (2018) grade classes from a…

We estimate male-female test score gaps in math and English language arts (ELA) for nearly 10,000 U.S. school districts using state accountability data from third- through eighth-grade students in the 2008-2009 through 2015-2016 school years. We find that the average U.S. school district has no gender achievement gap in math, but there is a gap of…

This is the 21st report by the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) that describes how states publicly report assessment data for students with disabilities in K-12 schools in the United States. The purpose of this report is to examine the extent to which states reported 2017-18 assessment data for students with disabilities "to the…

Recent reforms in education call for science teachers to incorporate STEM concepts into their curricula. This study explores the association among student and teacher demographics, and student learning of engineering content and attitudes towards STEM after participation in an elementary or middle school engineering-based science curricula.…

For each school level, figures indicate the school's overall performance across multiple indicators, along with the instructional services provide to students. Additionally, data demonstrate the performance of student groups in 2014-2015.

U.S. national data show that American Indians earn lower math and science scores than other ethnic/racial groups. In the current study, a brief, self-affirmation intervention was aimed at increasing science motivational beliefs in American Indian middle school students (n = 212, M[subscript age] = 12.7 years). Students, each read a biography of a…

The mathematics achievement gap in special education is a chronic and significant challenge for the field. The need for improved teacher preparation in mathematics is crucial in addressing this gap. This study examines a capstone experience in higher level mathematics tutoring for preservice teachers. Results indicate that the experience was…

Stereotype threat has been shown to have deleterious impacts on the short- and long-term academic performance and psychological well-being of racial and ethnic minority students. Psychological variables related to this identity threat represent significant sources of achievement and attainment gaps relative to nonstereotyped Asian and white…

The research featured in this paper is part of the CORE-PACE Research Partnership, which is focused on producing research that informs continuous improvement in the CORE districts as well as policy and practice in California and beyond. In this report, the authors used data from multiple interim assessments to examine how the rate of student…

One of the critical issues facing middle level educators is making sure we have the types of support in place for providing equitable learning environments for all students and helping them to feel that they belong in school. Literature suggests that a gender gap exists within middle level education today with respect to achievement scores and the…