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…

Increasing school-based parental involvement--which has links to improved student outcomes like academic achievement--is a core area of focus in many preschool programs. Yet, little research to date has examined what the association is between attending preschool and school-based parental involvement in early elementary school. This study…

In this brief, authors Suzanne Graham and Lauren Provost examine whether attending a school in a rural, urban, or suburban community is related to children's mathematics achievement in kindergarten, and whether increases in mathematics achievement between kindergarten and eighth grade differ for children in rural, urban, and suburban schools. They…

Recent policy dialogue suggests that chronic absenteeism is not only underdocumented, but is also detrimental to the success of students as early as kindergarten. That said, almost no empirical research has examined the effects of chronic absenteeism on student outcomes. This study addresses this underresearched issue in more depth. Using a…

This brief examines the complex interplay of family, school, and place factors in the reading achievement levels of third grade students. Third grade reading achievement is critical to later academic and occupational success. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, the authors report that suburban children realize greater gains in…

The authors examined the relation of school-year teaching practices to SES and race/ethnic score gaps in mathematics by fitting an individual growth model with a representative sample drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort data. There were mixed findings. Teaching practices had uniform effects for all students,…

In the 1998 reauthorization of Head Start, Congress mandated that the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) determine, on a national level, the impact of Head Start on the children it serves. As noted by the Advisory Committee on Head Start Research, this legislative mandate required that the impact study address two main research…

This article reports that two programs for teaching mathematics in the early grades--Math Expressions and Saxon Math--emerged as winners in early findings released last week from a large-scale federal experiment that pits four popular, and philosophically distinct, math curricula against one another. But the results don't promise to end the…