Von Hippel & Cañedo (2021) reported that US kindergarten teachers placed girls, Asian-Americans, and children from families of high socioeconomic status (SES) into higher ability groups than their test scores alone would warrant. The results fit the view that teachers were biased. This comment asks whether parents' lobbying for higher…

Federal accountability policy mandates that states administer standardized tests beginning in third grade. In turn, third-grade test scores are often viewed as a key indicator in policy and practice. Yet literacy struggles begin well before third grade, as do racial and socioeconomic disparities in children's literacy skills. Kindergarten…

Half of kindergarten teachers split children into higher and lower ability groups for reading or math. In national data, we predicted kindergarten ability group placement using linear and ordinal logistic regression with classroom fixed effects. In fall, test scores were the best predictors of group placement, but there was bias favoring girls,…

Half of kindergarten teachers split children into higher and lower ability groups for reading or math. In national data, we predicted kindergarten ability group placement using linear and ordinal logistic regression with classroom fixed effects. In fall, test scores were the best predictors of group placement, but there was bias favoring girls,…

Third grade is oftentimes the first year standardized literacy assessments are mandated. In turn many policies aimed at improving literacy have focused on third-grade test scores as a key indicator. Yet literacy struggles begin well before third grade, as do racial and socioeconomic disparities in children's literacy skills. Kindergarten readiness…

K-12 gifted and talented programs have struggled with racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, native language, and disability inequity since their inception. This inequity has been well documented in public schools since at least the 1970s and has been stubbornly persistent despite receiving substantial attention at conferences, in scholarly journals, and…

Significant racial and ethnic achievement gaps exist between students in the U.S. by elementary school, although the underlying causes for these achievement gaps differ. One factor for racial/ethnic achievement gaps is between-group differences in socioeconomic status (SES), particularly exposure to poverty. Moreover, other factors contributing to…

Multilevel modeling was used to investigate the relationship between poverty status, mathematics achievement gains, and behavioral engagement in learning over kindergarten. Data included information on 11,680 poor, low-income, and non-poor kindergartners from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K). Results…

As social and economic stratification between black and white Americans persists at the dawn of the twenty-first century, disparities in educational outcomes remain an especially formidable barrier. Recent research on the black/white achievement gap points to a perplexing pattern in this regard. Schools appear to exacerbate black/white disparities…

The current study examines the social and behavioral development of school-age children with different histories of overweight onset. Eight thousand children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) participated. Three groups of children were identified for analysis: (1) those who were persistently overweight from…