The author used the concepts of academic intensity and sense of responsibility to examine whether children with low school readiness may be moderated by the amount of exposure to learning activities and the attitudes that teachers hold toward these children. Analysis of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort revealed that…

Using a sample of schools testing annually in grades 9-11 with a vertically linked series of assessments, a latent growth curve model is used to model test scores with student intercepts and slopes nested within school. Missed assessments can occur because of student mobility, student dropout, absenteeism, and other reasons. Missing data…

Purpose: This study examined normative change in children's levels of social competence and parent-child interactions (PCIs) from kindergarten through second grade as well as relations between levels of PCI and children's social development. Methods: Multiple waves of data were collected from parents and teachers of 379 children ranging in age…

Longitudinal research in higher education faces several challenges. Appropriate methods of analyzing competence growth of students are needed to deal with those challenges and thereby obtain valid results. In this article, a pretest-posttest-posttest multivariate multilevel IRT model for repeated measures is introduced which is designed to address…

Policymakers view parental involvement (PI) as a crucial component of school reform efforts, but evidence of its effect on student achievement is equivocal. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort dataset, we examined the long-term impact on student- and school-level achievement of three types of school-based PI: PI to…

Standardized tests are often designed to provide only a snapshot of test takers' knowledge, skills, or abilities at a single point in time. Sometimes, however, they are expected to serve more demanding functions, one of them is assessing change in knowledge, skills, or ability over time because of learning effects.The latter is the case for the…

Longitudinal data from the children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) were used to assess how well measures of short-term and working memory and attention in early childhood predicted longitudinal growth trajectories in mathematics and reading comprehension. Analyses also examined whether changes in memory and attention were more…

Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort of 1998 (ECLS-K, 98), a nationally representative sample of kindergarteners in the United States, we investigated the relationship between approaches to learning and spring reading achievement with particular emphasis on classroom and school-level differences. We employed…

Purpose, Scope, and Method of Study: The purpose of this study was to determine if a correlation exists between grade span for ninth grade and gains in math achievement test scores in 10th grade and 12th grade. A quantitative, longitudinal, correlational research design was employed to investigate the research questions. The population was high…

Summer slide, uneven growth of academic skills during the calendar year, captures the fact that the learning gains children make during the school year do not continue at the same pace over the summer, when children are typically not in school. We compared growth of reading skills during the school year and during the summer months in children…

This Methodological Brief gives an overview of statistical methods used to gauge academic growth and discusses issues surrounding the measurement of growth in gifted populations. To illustrate some of these issues, we describe a growth model that examines differences in summer lag between gifted and nongifted students. We also provide…

The Matthew effect, where good readers get increasingly better over time compared to relatively lower-ability readers, is an often cited phenomenon in reading research. However, researchers have not always found empirical evidence supporting a Matthew effect. We used hierarchical growth curve modeling to test for the presence of the Matthew effect…

Background/Context: Most reforms in elementary education rely on teacher learning and improved instruction to increase student learning. This study increases our understanding of which types of professional development effectively change teaching practice in ways that boost student achievement. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study:…

Above-level testing is the practice of administering aptitude or academic achievement tests that are designed for typical students in higher grades or older age-groups to gifted or high-achieving students. Although widely accepted in gifted education, above-level testing has not been subject to careful psychometric scrutiny. In this study, I…

This study used the ECLS-K to examine the contextual influences of parent involvement on children's achievement growth in reading and math during elementary grades. The study used Rasch models and HLM measurement models to develop reliable and valid constructs of parent involvement both at the student and at the school level. Piecewise linear…