Meta-analysis is the synthesis of findings from research projects, which enables an estimate of the average or pooled effect across various studies. This study presents findings from the intention to treat analysis for a series of educational evaluations in England using a two-stage meta-analysis with standardised outcome data and individual…

Summer learning loss (SLL) is a familiar and much-studied phenomenon, yet new concerns that measurement artifacts may have distorted canonical SLL findings create a need to revisit basic research on SLL. Though race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status only account for about 4% of the variance in SLL, nearly all prior work focuses on these factors.…

Extending conventional value-added models (VAM) of teacher effects that focus on the estimation of average effects for excellence, this study examines "distributive" effects for equity. Using multilevel regression models, the study addresses two research questions to inform educational policy for teacher improvement and accountability.…

Research has shown that mathematical proficiency gaps are related to students' and schools' indicators of poverty, with fewer studies on neighborhood effects on achievement gaps. Although this literature has accounted for students' nesting within schools, so far, methodological constraints have not allowed researchers to formally account for…

This study examined the influences of teacher support and school environment on 10th graders' mathematics achievements, controlling for socioeconomic status, gender, and mathematics self-efficacy, and the differential influences of these factors for White and Black students in the USA. A sample of 8,682 White and 2,020 Black students who…

Leveraging achievement data measured in the fall and spring of kindergarten through eighth grade for 840,000 students attending 8,800 public schools, we report novel evidence on how achievement and growth patterns differ between rural and nonrural schools. Rural students start kindergarten slightly ahead of nonrural students but fall behind by…

Variance heterogeneity is a common feature of educational data when treatment differences expressed through means are present, and often reflects a treatment by subject interaction with respect to an outcome variable. Identifying variables that account for this interaction can enhance understanding of whom a treatment does and does not benefit in…

This study aims to understand the role that reading motivation plays in middle school reading achievement (including achievement gaps) by analyzing the 2015 grade 8 NAEP reading data. The study focuses on identifying the unique effects of student-level reading motivation and aggregated school-level mean reading motivation on reading achievement.…

Japanese compulsory education is considered as relatively egalitarian since poorer regions receive more funding from the central government, which standardizes the quality of education nationwide. Nevertheless, the literature indicates socioeconomic status-based achievement and educational attainment gaps. As parts of explanations of these gaps,…

Recent shifts in policy and practice have brought an increasingly more academic focus to the early grades, evidenced in rising standards and the now widely accepted notion that kindergarten is the new first grade. These views however are mostly supported by teacher and parent self-reports and not by an analysis of literacy achievement data. We…

One of the most salient problems in education is the achievement gap. The researchers investigated the effects of parental education and parental occupations in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or medical professions (STEMM) on the achievement gap in mathematics. Because students were nested within schools, two-level Hierarchical…

We investigate the impact of external differentiation and vocational orientation of (lower and upper) secondary education on country variation in the mean numeracy skills of, and skills gaps between, adults with low and intermediate formal qualifications. We use data on 30- to 44-year-olds in 18 countries from the 2011-12 round of the Program for…

The authors examined differential effects of interim assessments on minority and low socioeconomic status students' achievement in Grades K-6. They conducted a large-scale cluster randomized experiment in 2009-2010 to evaluate the impact of Indiana's policy initiative introducing interim assessments statewide. The authors used 2-level models to…

What causes the literacy gap and can schools compensate for it? The authors investigated 3 drivers of the gap: preliteracy knowledge, schooling, and the summer vacation. Longitudinal literacy data over 5 time points were collected on 126 five-year-olds attending higher or lower socioeconomic status (SES) schools during their first 15 months of…

This brief examined the patterns of reading achievement using statewide data from all students (Grades 3-10) in multiple years to examine gaps based on student, school, and district characteristics. Results indicate reading achievement varied most between students within schools and that students' prior achievement was the strongest predictor of…