This study investigated the factors influencing students' performance in science subjects at different schools in a school district in the midland area of South Carolina. For the convenience of the study and to maintain confidentiality, the school district is named Midland School District 2022. The population of this study included students in…

Background: We used an opportunity gap framework to analyze the pathways through which students enter into and depart from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees in an R1 higher education institution and to better understand the demographic disparities in STEM degree attainment. Results: We found disparities in 6-year…

This report evaluates the effects of Lexia[TM] Core5[TM] Reading (Core5) -- a product of Lexia Learning Systems -- on the reading achievement of students in grades 3-5 during the 2021-2022 academic year. Core5 is a program that focuses on various student literacy skills, such as fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. This report represents the…

While the ongoing academic impacts of the COVID pandemic in grades 3-8 has been well documented, far less is known about its effects on students who were in pre-K or kindergarten when the pandemic started in March 2020. In this brief, we focus on students who were in first and second grade in the 2021-22 school year, and for whom the majority of…

We study the effects of exposure to non-resident students on the outcomes of undergraduate in-state students during a period of high non-resident enrollment growth at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Our models leverage within-major, cross-time variation in nonresident exposure for identification. We find no evidence that increased exposure to…

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share more detailed results and to describe more fully the sample and methods used in the research included in the brief, "Student achievement in 2021-22: Cause for hope and continued urgency." The authors investigated two main research questions in this brief: (1) How do achievement gains…

This dissertation contains three essays that examine the influence of state policies on transfer enrollment at 4-year institutions. The first essay is a systematic review of 16 studies that provide an understanding of the literature on state policies and transfer enrollment at 4-year institutions. In the review I provide an understanding of who…

Previous literature reported that Black students receive out-of-school suspensions (OSSs) and expulsions at disproportionately higher rates and have lower test scores than White students. This study provides recent evidence on the relation between racial disparities in discipline and in achievement, with particular focus on achievement gains, in…

Six-year college graduation rates for Hispanic and White students from 17 cohorts were analyzed using data from the U.S. Department of Education's IPED System. Results from regression analyses confirmed statistically significant positive linear trends for Hispanic and White students and statistically significant differences between the two…

Black students remain under enrolled in AP courses compared to White peers, even with intentional outreach. One possible reason for this continued disparity is that Black students may choose not to enroll in AP courses where they are racially isolated. Using the 2017-2018 Civil Rights Data Collection and multilevel modeling, I examine the…

Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest partnered with the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) to examine Arkansas's middle and high school indicators of postsecondary readiness and success, building on an earlier study of these indicators (Hester et al., 2021). Academic indicators include attaining proficiency on state achievement tests,…

The extent to which youth attend Tier 2 evidence-based intervention is an important dimension of implementation. This study examined attendance patterns of 369 middle schoolers involved in a randomized trial testing the impact of Coping Power, an evidence-based Tier 2 preventive intervention. We conducted latent profile analysis to examine student…

The question of why we need to think about how we research race demands a conceptualization of race that captures both its social construction and its temporal evolution. We need both an understanding of race and clarity about how we talk about it in our design and conduct of research, and in how we interpret and apply it in our findings. As a…

The extent to which youth attend Tier 2 evidence-based intervention is an important dimension of implementation. This study examined attendance patterns of 369 middle schoolers involved in a randomized trial testing the impact of Coping Power, an evidence-based Tier 2 preventive intervention. We conducted latent profile analysis to examine student…

A small subset of education studies analyzes school data collected seasonally (separating the summer from the school year). At first, this work was primarily known for documenting learning loss in the summers, but scholars have since recognized that observing how inequality changes between summer and school periods provides leverage for…