Background: Grade retention is an educational aspect that concerns teachers, families, and experts. It implies an economic cost for families, as well as a personal cost for the student, who is forced to study one more year. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of course repetition on math, science and reading competencies, and…

We evaluate the effects of grade retention on students' academic, attendance, and disciplinary outcomes in Indiana. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that third-grade retention increases achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) and math immediately and substantially, and the effects persist into middle school. We find no evidence…

A common belief underlying the dimensional comparison theory is that reading self-concept has a positive relation to reading achievement but a negative relation to math achievement. However, this belief is incomplete and potentially misleading as supporting evidence is usually derived from studies without simultaneously considering the mediated…

Various forms of networks in education have been proposed by scholars, policymakers, and educational administrators as a strategy for school improvement. However, there are few empirical studies on the effect of interschool networks. We analyzed data from 76 elementary schools in a Midwestern state to examine the association between interschool…

Excellence gaps are differences in advanced education outcomes among student groups. This study replicates and extends an earlier study on the prevalence and magnitude of excellence gaps based on student sex and immigrant status using Grade 8 TIMSS data. Data were included for the 12 countries that have participated in each TIMSS administration…

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share detailed results and to more fully describe the sample and methods used in the research included in the brief, "Recovery Still Elusive: 2023-24 Student Achievement Highlights Persistent Achievement Gaps and a Long Road Ahead." The authors investigated three main research questions in…

Michigan's Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP) is a state-funded pre-K program that serves at risk four-year-old children across the state. Utilizing longitudinal data from 1,394 children in a mid-sized urban school district, we conducted regression analyses and piecewise linear growth models to examine the growth trajectory of GSRP children and…

This paper studies mathematics learning gaps within Indian children at two points in time. Dividing them into two groups, better performing and the rest, we investigate the causes of the difference in the average learning gap between them at those two points. We explore this question using the threefold Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition at these survey…

There is growing concern that some public service providers may be nonprofit in name but not in fact. We consider this issue in the context of nonprofit charter schools, which sometimes subcontract their daily operations to for-profit management organizations. We use unique data from Ohio to study how nonprofit charters' reliance on for-profit…

Unaddressed social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) needs and academic challenges may lead to negative youth outcomes. Universal behavioral risk screeners, like the student self-report Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Risk Screener (SAEBRS-SRS), identify at-risk students. To improve screening tool use, research is needed to identify the…

Student mobility that occurs within a school year may be especially disruptive for student outcomes, yet little is known regarding the predictors of within-year mobility. In particular, research has yet to comprehensively examine the role of student achievement in predicting within-year student mobility. Thus, we sought to understand this link by…

Youth with conduct problems have poorer academic outcomes than their typically developing peers. The objective of the current study was to examine how sexual minority status was associated with trajectories of teacher-rated mathematics and language arts (i.e., reading and writing) achievement in seven consecutive years across the transition to…

The reading literacy skills of Australian adolescents, as measured in successive PISA waves, have declined since 2000. Literacy achievement is not low by international standards, but it is lower in Australia than it is in Anglophone countries with which we compare ourselves, e.g. Canada. Using PISA 2018 and PIRLS 2021 data, we investigated both…

Brazil's education system lags behind international standards, with two-fifths of students scoring below the minimum level of proficiency in mathematics, science, and reading. Thus, this study combined machine learning with traditional statistics to identify the most important predictors and to interpret their effects on proficiency in the PISA…

This brief is a continuation of NWEA's research series examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student achievement and progress toward academic recovery. Initiated in the early phase of the pandemic, this series has leveraged NWEA's large national sample of longitudinal MAP® Growth™ data to track student performance and compare it to…