Middle school is one of the most important times during which students gain knowledge. However, a large proportion of adolescents have continued to complete middle school without mastering essential knowledge of, and skills in, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Adolescents who miss school in the 30-60 days leading up to high-stakes exams…

Differential Item Functioning (DIF) is commonly employed to examine measurement bias of test scores. Current approaches to DIF compare item functioning separately for select demographic identities such as gender, racial stratification, and economic status. Examining potential item bias fails to recognize and capture the intersecting configurations…

This study argues that the long-standing difficulties in addressing educational disadvantage point to the need to change the analytical categories used and takes territoriality as an analytical lens to explore how students perceive their place in the world. The study presents the results of a qualitative study investigating how 222 14-19-year-old…

Graduating high school is an important key predictor of this nation's ability to remain globally competitive and a person's long-term financial and social success. At the macrolevel, graduation rates impact a nation's post-secondary education participation, which has been found to be a key indicator of its ability to compete in a global economy.…

Past research extensively documents inequalities in educational opportunity and achievement by students' race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status (SES). Less scholarship focuses on how race/ethnicity and SES interact and jointly contribute to educational inequalities. We advance this burgeoning line of scholarship by charting math achievement…

The purpose of this grounded theory study is to identify teacher factors that affect student performance on computerized exams such as teacher beliefs, professional development, and school resources. Additionally, the researcher seeks to identify student factors that can have an impact on student performance such as student demographics and the…

Predicting school dropout rates is an important issue for the smooth execution of an educational system. This problem is solved by classifying students into two classes using educational activities related statistical datasets. One of the classes must identify the students who have the tendency to persist. The other class must identify the…

Despite the widespread popularity of both Dual Language Programs (DLP) and charter schools in California, little is known about the intersection of these two school models. In a quantitative study utilizing several statewide databases, researchers explored four questions related to DLP and charter schools: 1) How many Latina/x/o students attend…

Background/Context: The problems that school district leaders identify and how they frame them have consequences--for both policy implementation and the ways that teachers respond. Although that is likely true in all community contexts (from rural to urban, inside and outside metropolitan centers), the influence of broader discourses associated…

Much of the literature estimating disproportionality in special education identification rates has focused on socioeconomic status, race, and gender. However, recent evidence suggests that a student's school starting age also impacts the likelihood they receive special education services, particularly in the early grades. I build on the evidence…

This paper addresses two major and potentially conflicting movements: the importance of diversity as both a conceptual and political issue and the rise of the evidence-based practice movement in education. This tension is particularly important when evaluating and reporting universal interventions because of their intended applicability across…

Is physics education research based on a representative sample of students? To answer this question we skimmed physics education research papers from three journals for the years 1970-2015 looking for the number of research subjects, the course the subjects were enrolled in, and the institution where the research was conducted. We combined this…

In the current educational climate, a great deal of emphasis is placed on measuring both teacher and school effectiveness. We employed a residual based approach to examine school effectiveness using school mean achievement data from one state. Rather than evaluating schools based on their mean achievement, we chose to predict achievement based on…

In the three essays in this thesis, I explore the effect of school discipline policies on the suspension of public-school students, in an urban setting. In the first essay, using aggregate data, I investigate the effect of zero-tolerance disciplinary polices on secondary-school students. Capitalizing on a natural experiment, I used a…

This paper provides a brief overview of key trends in enrollment, demographics, and segregation in California's schools in recent decades. Total public school enrollment has been relatively stable, and charter schools account for an increasing share of public enrollment. The Hispanic share of public enrollment has increased dramatically, and the…