Parent participation in school management has been promoted as a strategy for holding schools accountable for education quality and outcomes. However, the evidence has proven inconclusive and limited in explaining mechanisms to affect student achievement. By using public school student data derived from the Programme for International Student…

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) by the OECD measures student study time during formal school periods and during periods of out-of-school-time (OST). The purpose of these items is to account for differences in country to country achievement levels. However, analyses of the impact of additional study time on student…

PISA test data from 2000 to today have shown Germany's education system is one of the most inequitable within the OECD, with high correlations between student background and achievement outcomes. Scholars have identified the highly differentiated school structure, which tracks students as young as 10 years old, as a central cause. This scholarship…

Mathematics is not just memorized facts, but rather it is understanding how to approach and solve problems, and problem-solving requires linguistic proficiency. Too often, English learners' (ELs) relatively low math performance is dismissed due to their supposed "limited" English proficiency. Taking this perspective, a constructivist…

This paper explores parental involvement using principal and parent survey reports to examine whether parents' involvement in their children's schools predicts academic achievement. Survey data from principals and parents of seven countries from the PISA 2012 database and hierarchical linear modelling were used to analyse between- and within-…

While shadow education, organized learning activities outside formal school, has grown greatly around the world, the relationship between formal schooling and shadow education has not been well investigated. This study is therefore intended to empirically test whether formal education's structure (i.e. tracking) affects students' shadow education…

Prior research has suggested that staff-centred organisational factors such as participation, morale and shortage can have a significant effect on organisational outcomes. However, relatively little attention has been paid to cross-country examination of these relationships specifically for educational organisations such as schools, colleges, and…

Prior research has shown that teacher-centred factors such as teacher participation in decision making, teacher morale, and shortage of teaching staff, can affect school performance. In this study we examined how these factors differ between White-majority and White-minority schools both before and after controlling for school characteristics such…

This article considers the counter-intuitive observation that some of the wealthiest nations can feature low tertiary graduation rates (e.g. Austria, Germany, and Switzerland). It also considers the observation that many countries with high tertiary graduation rates show low levels of social equity, while many countries with low tertiary…

Studies have highlighted the beneficial effects of parental involvement in children's educational lives. Few studies, however, analyse parental involvement in a cross-national perspective and few evaluate a wide array of forms of involvement. In 2009, 14 countries and economies implemented the parental questionnaire option in the PISA 2009 cycle.…

This report provides a systematic review and empirical evidence related to the experiences of middle-income countries and economies participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2000 to 2015. PISA is a triennial survey that aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old…