The purpose of this quantitative study was to analyze the ECLS-K:2011 longitudinal study to determine the impact the mother's education has on her child's kindergarten academic performance, growth and attainment from kindergarten through fifth grade, and the background characteristics that affect child academic development. This study employed a…

Previous research often leads to inconsistent findings on the relationships between parental involvement and academic achievement. This study theorizes three parenting approaches based on parental expectations, evaluations, and networks--"normative parenting," "reactive parenting," and "competitive parenting"--to…

Teachers' teaching self-efficacy and teachers' feelings of negative affect may be associated with students' academic achievement; however, little is known about how these factors directly affect adolescent students' math and reading achievement. The eighth-grade wave of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study data was used to investigate teacher…

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) overdiagnosis and overtreatment unnecessarily exposes children to potential harm and contributes to provider and community skepticism toward those with moderate or severe symptoms and significant impairments, resulting in less supportive care. Yet, which sociodemographic groups of children are…

A few popular explanations attempt to argue for a weaker relationship between socioeconomic status (SES), parental involvement (PI), and achievement among Asian Americans compared to their white counterparts: Asian American students' Confucian culture, strong motivation for upward mobility as immigrants, unique forms of parental involvement…

Although there is evidence to suggest that parent involvement (PI) in children's education positively impacts their academic success, the mechanisms of this effect are less well studied. One potential mechanism is a set of student-level motivational and behavioral factors labeled approaches to learning (ATL). The purpose of the current study was…

With a focus on within-person effects, this study investigated mutualism among academic skills (reading, math, science) and between those skills and verbal working memory in a general population sample and groups with high or low skills from Grades 2 to 5 (2010-2016, N = 859-9040, age 6.27-13.13 years, 49% female, ethnically diverse). Mutualism…

Background: Few studies have examined associations of public library use and shared book reading to kindergarten children's academic skills. Methods: The study sample consisted of 13,385 kindergarten students enrolled in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 (ECLS-K: 2011). Parents reported on public library use…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the influence of social-emotional competence (SEC) and various other student- and school-level variables on the academic achievement of kindergarteners. Data were collected on a nationally representative cohort of kindergarteners as part of the United States Department of Education's Early…

Background: Socioeconomic gaps in children's academic and social skills are large upon Kindergarten entry (von Hippel, Workman, and Downey 2018; Reardon 2011; Reardon and Portilla 2016). Preschool programs may yield particularly large benefits to low-income students and racially minoritized groups and may be promising for reducing inequalities…

Nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 2011 (n = 14,370) were used to examine the grade-level and cumulative outcomes of school absenteeism between kindergarten and fifth grade for students' school performance in the United States. Students who were more frequently absent in any year of…

Background: A potential target of educational policies or practices to address racial or ethnic disparities in school functioning is to increase the extent to which Black and Hispanic students are taught by teachers who are of the same race or ethnicity. Exposure to teachers of the same race or ethnicity may help provide Black and Hispanic…

The benefits of student-teacher ethnoracial matching on student outcomes--ranging from academic achievement to postsecondary attainment--are well documented. Yet, we know far less about the role of student-teacher ethnoracial matching in the earliest grades school and on less about effects on non-academic outcomes. The purpose of this study is to…

Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Kindergarten cohort (ECLS-K), this study aimed to identify body mass index (BMI) trajectories from kindergarten to eighth grade using group-based trajectory modeling (GBTM), examine the relationships between BMI trajectories and adolescents' school achievement (reading and math), determine…

We analyzed a population-based cohort of 11,780 U.S. children to identify risk and protective factors by kindergarten predictive of being frequently verbally, social, reputationally, or physically victimized during the upper elementary grades. We also stratified the analyses by biological sex. Kindergarten children displaying externalizing problem…