Since the fall semester of 2016, first-time international student enrollment (ISE[subscript ft]) has declined at U.S. colleges and universities. This trend disrupts a steady upwards trajectory of ISE[subscript ft] rates. Previous research has demonstrated that various political, social, and macroeconomic factors influence the number of…

The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is a multicycle survey of adult skills and competencies sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The survey examines a range of basic skills in the information age and assesses these adult skills consistently across participating…

The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is a multicycle survey of adult skills and competencies sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The survey examines a range of basic skills in the information age and assesses these adult skills consistently across participating…

Colleges have increasingly turned to predictive analytics to target at-risk students for additional support. Most of the predictive analytic applications in higher education are proprietary, with private companies offering little transparency about their underlying models. We address this lack of transparency by systematically comparing two…

We use longitudinal data on high school students in Washington State to assess the relationships between English Language Arts (ELA) teacher value added and other qualifications and the high school and postsecondary outcomes of their students. We also investigate whether these relationships differ for students with and without disabilities. We…

The greening of the United States teacher workforce puts a premium on districts and schools hiring effective and persistent beginning teachers. Given the limitations of characteristics currently available at the time of hiring (e.g., academic ability measures, preparation type), we built off previous research in economics and psychology to…

This year's study is the 35th in a series of annual reports on trends in dropout and attrition rates in Texas public schools. The 2019-20 study builds on a series of studies by the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) that track the number and percent of students in Texas who are lost from public school enrollment prior to…

The purpose of this study was to examine the cognitive predictors of calculations and number line estimation with whole numbers and fractions. At-risk 4th-grade students (N = 139) were assessed on 6 domain-general abilities (i.e., working memory, processing speed, concept formation, language, attentive behavior, and nonverbal reasoning) and…

Despite extensive efforts to increase the number of undergraduates majoring and persisting in science, math, engineering, and technology (STEM) fields, there is surprisingly little understanding of recent patterns of switching from these majors to those in other fields of study. In addition, little is known about whether the racial, class, and…

This study explored whether a predictive model of student loan default could be developed with data from an institution's three-year cohort default rate report. The study used borrower data provided by a large two-year community college. Independent variables under investigation included total undergraduate Stafford student loan debt, total number…

The Research Alliance for New York City Schools examined Department of Education (DOE) School Survey data from 2008-2010 to better understand the richness and complexities of the information elicited by the Survey from parents, students, and teachers. This document provides the appendices to the technical report "New York City School Survey…

Unlike in elementary school, high-school teacher effects may be confounded with both selection to tracks and unobserved track-level treatments. I document sizable confounding track effects, and show that traditional tests for the existence of teacher effects are likely biased. After accounting for these biases, high-school algebra and English…

The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) assessed the English literacy skills of a nationally representative sample of 18,500 U.S. adults (age 16 and older) residing in private households. NAAL is the first national assessment of adult literacy since the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The NAAL and NALS produced direct…

In this paper we consider the challenges involved in evaluating teacher preparation programs when controlling for school contextual bias. Including school fixed effects in the achievement models used to estimate preparation program effects controls for school environment by relying on differences among student outcomes within the same schools to…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) continues to be interested in addressing the issue identified by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). With the release of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading and mathematics assessments, NCES again had the opportunity to measure the status and change in…