Comparative international assessments of academic achievement consistently indicate that US students trail behind many peers, particularly those from east Asia, in math and science. Traditional efforts to explain this finding have focused on identifying characteristics that might differentiate the United States from top-performing countries.…

This paper investigates the relationship between student engagement--with teachers and schools--and academic performance in Mexico. It uses hierarchical linear models and data from the OECD 2003 PISA study to examine the relative importance of engagement in comparison to other educational inputs--school and family characteristics--as predictors of…

In addition to its goal of limiting China's population growth, a key purpose of China's one-child policy is to improve children's well-being. The government has made a strenuous effort to limit parents' childbearing in exchange for the greater opportunities it provides for their only children, including educational opportunities. In this article,…