Conventional methods for mediation analysis generate biased results when the mediator--outcome relationship depends on the treatment condition. This article shows how the ratio-of-mediator-probability weighting (RMPW) method can be used to decompose total effects into natural direct and indirect effects in the presence of treatment-by-mediator…

African American and Hispanic students receive more punitive school discipline than White students even when students of color commit similar infractions as Whites. Similarly, students with a disability status are more likely to experience harsher discipline in schools compared to their counterparts without a disability label. This study examines…

This brief explores whether the geographic location of the early care and education (ECE) workforce might be associated with variations in well-being. Child Trends examined differences in Arkansas's ECE workforce by region and by urbanicity. Measures of well-being were derived from a comprehensive statewide ECE workforce survey. For this study,…

The objective of this thesis is two-fold: (1) to investigate the degree distribution property of community-based social networks (CSNs) and (2) to provide solutions to a pertinent problem, the Key Player Problem. In the first part of this thesis, we consider a growing community-based network in which the ability of nodes competing for links to new…

To throw light on the challenge of providing education to pastoral households in the context of social and economic change, this study investigates the effects of herd migration on child schooling in Northern Kenya. Specifically, the analysis uses both household panel data and community-level focus-group data to identify the barriers to schooling,…

Researchers investigated the diagnostic utility of the Social Skills Improvement System: Performance Screening Guide (SSIS-PSG). Correlational, regression, receiver operating characteristic (ROC), and conditional probability analyses were run to compare ratings on the SSIS-PSG subscales of Prosocial Behavior, Reading Skills, and Math Skills, to…

Research on high school math course taking documents the advantages of starting high school at or beyond Algebra 1. Fewer studies examine differentiation into remedial, general, and honors Algebra 1 course types by course rigor. This study examines how course grades and course rigor are associated with math attainment among students with similar…

Increasing adoption and adaptation of promising instructional strategies and materials has been identified as a critical component needed to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This paper examines typical propagation practices and resulting outcomes of proposals written by developers of educational…

Students of all ages face severe conceptual difficulties regarding key aspects of evolution-- the central, unifying, and overarching theme in biology. Aspects strongly related to abstract "threshold" concepts like randomness and probability appear to pose particular difficulties. A further problem is the lack of an appropriate instrument…

We extend a unified and easy-to-use approach to measurement error and missing data. In our companion article, Blackwell, Honaker, and King give an intuitive overview of the new technique, along with practical suggestions and empirical applications. Here, we offer more precise technical details, more sophisticated measurement error model…

Often program administrators are interested in knowing how students benefit from participation in programs compared to students who do not participate. Such comparisons may be sullied by the fact that participants self-select into programs, resulting in differences between groups prior to programming. By controlling for…

While the influence of presentation formats have been widely studied in Bayesian reasoning tasks, we present the first systematic investigation of how presentation formats influence information search decisions. Four experiments were conducted across different probabilistic environments, where subjects (N = 2,858) chose between 2 possible search…

This study examined the high schools' state tests performances in mathematics, reading, and science of an open-enrollment STEM-focused charter school system,Harmony Public Schools(HPS), between 2010 and 2013, and compared them with the performance of matched traditional public schools (TPS) in Texas. After propensity score matching, 12 HPS schools…

Much has been made of the academic success of children who have attended private secondary schools in Britain, but far less attention has been directed to whether there are similar benefits from attending a private primary school. Using data from three British birth cohorts--born in 1958, 1970 and 2000/1--this paper profiles the family background…

The present study investigated the development of fraction comparison strategies through a longitudinal analysis of children's responses to a fraction comparison task in 4th through 6th grades (N = 394). Participants were asked to choose the larger value for 24 fraction pairs blocked by fraction type. Latent class analysis of performance over item…