There has been a growing need felt by practitioners, researchers, and evaluators to obtain a common measure of science engagement that can be used in different out-of-school time (OST) science learning settings. We report on the development and validation of a novel 10-item self-report instrument designed to measure, communicate, and ultimately…

According to the Multiple Deficit Model, comorbidity results when the genetic and environmental risk factors that increase the liability for a disorder are domain-general. In order to explore the role of domain-general etiological risk factors in the co-occurrence of learning-related difficulties, the current meta-analysis compiled 38 studies of…

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to examine how local governments respond to a public health crisis amid high levels of partisan polarization and an increasing tendency for local issues to become nationalized. As an arena that has, in recent years, been relatively separate from national partisan divides, public schools provide a…

This paper uses meta-analytic techniques to estimate the separate effects of the starting age, program duration, and persistence of impacts of early childhood education programs on children's cognitive and achievement outcomes. It concentrates on studies published before the wide scale penetration of state-pre-K programs. Specifically, data are…

Despite the importance of teachers, the preparation programs intended to train them and provide them with the foundational skills they need to grow into high-quality educators vary in format, curriculum offered, quality, and more. Alternative teacher certification programs that are run outside of institutions of higher education (IHE) are an…

Among the challenges confronting Wisconsin's K-12 education system are long-standing disparities in educational opportunity and achievement on the basis of race. Racial and ethnic achievement gaps also largely correlate with related socioeconomic differences within students' communities in terms of income, poverty, unemployment, and educational…

Because families are the first nurturers and educators of their children, it is helpful for policymakers and other stakeholders to understand how family characteristics, the activities in which families engage, and their neighborhood circumstances are associated with preschool children's health and readiness for learning. The analyses presented in…

In 2018, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) developed an indicator for being "on track" at the end of a high school student's freshman year. As part of the district's overall strategy for improving graduation rates, school administrators currently use the Ninth Grade On-Track indicator as an early marker of progress towards…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), first administered in 1969, is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what the nation's students know and can do in various subjects such as civics, geography, mathematics, reading, science, U.S. history, and writing. The results of NAEP are released as The…

This research brief uses nationally representative data from the 2012/17 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:12/17) to examine post-college transitions of US undergraduates into the skilled technical workforce (STW), defined here as workers in a collection of occupations that require significant levels of science, technology,…

The novel virus caused by COVID-19 has disrupted life across the country and led to nationwide school closures. In the midst of this disruption and uncertainty, young people, teachers, parents, and other youth-serving professionals are working in new and creative ways to support young people's education. In the interest of understanding how young…

These are the appendixes for the report, "How Legacy High School Students Use Their Flexible Time." The study examined whether students with different demographic characteristics and academic achievement levels use their flex-time differently. The study found that, on average over the school year, students had approximately 80 minutes of…

This is the technical appendices for the report, "Higher Education and Economic Opportunity in California." Lower rates of college access and completion among Latinos, African Americans, and low-income Californians exacerbate the state's economic divide and puts California further behind in meeting its workforce needs. And even though a…

This study presents a framework that uses academic trajectories in the middle grades for identifying students in need of intervention and providing targeted support. We apply a set of academic college readiness benchmarks to rich longitudinal data for more than 360,000 students in 5900 schools across 49 states and the District of Columbia. In both…

This study examines the relationship between athletics, athletic leadership, and academic achievement. This is likely to be a tricky issue as athletes and athletic leaders are not likely to be a random group of students. To address this issue I control for school fixed effects and instrument the endogenous variables with height. I find that…