Many national and international educational data collection programs offer researchers opportunities to investigate contextual effects related to student performance. In those programs, schools are often used in the first-stage sampling process and students are randomly drawn from selected schools. However, the "incidental" dependence of…

Teachers provide emotional and behavioral supports essential for success in the classroom. This study examined the roles of child interpersonal skills, teacher expectations, and school racial and poverty compositions on the quality of relationships formed between teachers and children. A subsample from the Early Childhood Longitudinal…

Income disparities in children's academic and behavioral skills have grown larger over the past 50 years. At the same time, economic segregation across communities has increased, raising questions regarding the role of community factors in explaining income gaps in children's functioning. Combining geospatial data with longitudinal survey data…

Causal search algorithms have been effectively applied in different fields including biology, genetics, climate science, medicine, and neuroscience. However, there have been scant applications of these methods in social and behavioral sciences. This article provides an illustrative example of how causal search algorithms can shed light on…

Developmental studies have consistently argued for consideration of contextual influences on children's socioemotional well-being. This is particularly true among children of immigrants, who have highly diverse social, cultural, and economic backgrounds. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten, this study disentangled the…

Self-regulation is a critical component of school readiness and success. Practices for supporting self-regulation may be advanced by a better understanding of factors characterizing children at risk for challenges and contextual mechanisms associated with desirable developmental trajectories. The current study leverages a large national data set…

Every country--and even every community--has populations of students who severely underperform relative to other groups and to their own potential. These performance differences are generally called achievement gaps, and they tend to focus on gaps at basic levels of academic proficiency. But such gaps also exist among the highest levels of…

Background: An enduring question about achievement gaps is, which aspects of schools contribute most? At the early grade levels, when children spend the vast majority of their school day in a single classroom with a single teacher, school inequities that correlate with achievement gaps likely originate within the classroom. This study examined the…

Informed by the current literature, this study examines social contexts across middle grade schools with different grade span configurations. In doing so, the authors aim to build understanding of where and how to target interventions in the middle grades to enhance maintenance of social-emotional adjustment and experiences from middle childhood…

Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K), demographic and parental predictors of parental self-efficacy were identified among parents with children transitioning to kindergarten. In addition, the mediating role that parental involvement in the home and/or school context may play in the…

We use two nationally representative data sets to estimate the prevalence of kindergarten "redshirting"--the decision to delay a child's school entry. We find that between 4% and 5.5% of children delay kindergarten, a lower number than typically reported in popular and academic accounts. Male, White, and high-SES children are most likely…

Background/Context: Seasonal researchers have developed a theory and hypotheses regarding the importance of neighborhood and school contexts for early childhood learning but have not possessed nationally representative data and precise contextual measures with which to examine their hypotheses. Purpose/Research Questions: This empirical study…

This study compared immigrant and nonimmigrant educational achievement (i.e., the immigrant gap) in math by reexamining the explanatory power of race and socioeconomic status (SES)--two variables, perhaps, most commonly considered in educational research. Four research questions were explored through growth curve modeling, factor analysis, and…

Teachers' subjective understandings of their students' cognitive abilities have important implications for classroom interactions, children's access to resources and opportunities, and educational equity more broadly. Using nationally representative data and three-level hierarchical linear models, this study explored the links between teacher…

This multimethod study investigates the attitudes teachers in urban and low-income schools have about teaching early elementary students. The authors examine the contextual characteristics of elementary schools where such teachers are willing to take responsibility for children's learning. The quantitative analyses focus on a subsample of students…