Using data from two rounds of surveys on students in the Washington State Achievers (WSA) program, this study examined the relationship between student engagement in college activities and student persistence in college. Different approaches using student engagement measures in the persistence models were compared. The results indicated that the…

Three experiments explored attention to eye gaze, which is incompletely understood in typical development and is hypothesized to be disrupted in autism. Experiment 1 (n = 26 typical adults) involved covert orienting to box, arrow, and gaze cues at two probabilities and cue-target times to test whether reorienting for gaze is endogenous, exogenous,…

Algebraic solving ability had been discussed by many educators and researchers. There exists no definite definition for algebraic solving ability as it can be viewed from different perspectives. In this paper, the nature of algebraic solving ability in terms of algebraic processes that demonstrate the ability in solving algebraic problem is…

A growing number of American states and school districts require students to meet basic performance standards in core academic subjects at key transition points in order to be promoted to the next grade. We exploit a discontinuity in the probability of third grade retention under a Florida test-based promotion policy to study the causal effect of…

In 2007, the Virginia Board of Education directed the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) to study academic indicators that are associated with high school students' successful preparation for college and careers. VDOE then embarked on a multi-year effort to identify available data sources and conduct research on high school indicators that…

The main goal of this study was to illustrate and provide some direction for dealing with the complexities of propensity score matching within different multilevel contexts. Special attention is given to how procedures typically applied in a non-hierarchical setting may be modified to properly reduce the expected bias in the estimated treatment…

New evidence on how students' choice of postsecondary institution is sensitive to grant aid offers from the colleges and universities. Institutional aid sensitivity is largest for students from the least wealthy families but does not vary by race/ethnicity or measured academic ability. A technical appendix is included.

Sampling tasks and sampling distributions provide a fertile realm for investigating students' conceptions of variability. A project-designed teaching episode on samples and sampling distributions was team-taught in 6 research classrooms (2 middle school and 4 high school) by the investigators and regular classroom mathematics teachers. Data…

This study explores the impact of school-based victimization on the adolescent's social bond. Previous research has provided empirical support for Hirschi's social control theory that the strength of the adolescent's social bond is associated with the probability that he or she will engage in criminal offending. However, research identifying what…

This study serves as a teaching aid for teachers of introductory statistics. The aim of this study was limited to determining various sample sizes when estimating population proportion. Tables on sample sizes were generated using a C[superscript ++] program, which depends on population size, degree of precision or error level, and confidence…

In Chinese societies, violence among adolescent dating partners remains a largely ignored and invisible phenomenon. The goal of this study is to examine the relationships among gender-role beliefs, attitudes justifying dating violence, and the experiences of dating-violence perpetration and victimization among Chinese adolescents. This study has…

Purpose: This study examines policies set in the collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) negotiated between teachers' unions and school boards and explores what kinds of districts have contract provisions that restrict district administrators, enhance administrative flexibility, and/or improve teachers' professional work lives and that have…

Objective: The study: (1) provides the first assessment of the a "priori" measurement model and psychometric properties of the Organizational Social Context (OSC) measurement system in a US nationwide probability sample of child welfare systems; (2) illustrates the use of the OSC in constructing norm-based organizational culture and climate…

The amount of instruction students receive has long been viewed as a foundational educational resource. This article presents an analysis of the time students spend in elementary English language arts (ELA) and mathematics instruction. In mathematics, the average student received about 140 hr of instruction, but students in the top sixth of…

The Measures of Effective Teaching project has collected performance data using multiple indicators from over three thousand teachers across six urban districts. In the second year of the study, classes of students were randomly assigned to teachers in order to assess the impact of assignment bias on performance judgments. This article discusses…