Working from a core perspective on the developmental implications of economic disadvantage, this study attempted to identify "family-based" mechanisms of economic effects on early learning and their potential "school-based" remedies. Multilevel analysis of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort revealed that the accumulation of…

Researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and parents have assumed a positive relationship between school attendance and academic success. And yet, among the vast body of empirical research examining how input factors relate to academic outcomes, few investigations have honed in on the precision of the relationship between individual attendance…

Ethnic minority students are at risk for school failure and show a heightened susceptibility to negative teacher expectancy effects. In the present study, whether the prejudiced attitudes of teachers relate to their expectations and the academic achievement of their students is examined. The prejudiced attitudes of 41 elementary school teachers…

A latent growth model was used to investigate the longer term efficacy of phonics and integrated language arts instruction as well as amount of such instruction on children's reading development, using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study data set (kindergarten through fifth grade). Type and amount of instruction were…

The term "diversity" seems to carry a wide array of definitions. These definitions can affect the ways teachers understand and employ the term as well as the ways in which they approach sociocultural differences in their classrooms. The current study included a survey of preservice teachers' beliefs about various identities associated with terms…

This study explores the nature of reading comprehension difficulties among early adolescent language minority (LM) learners and native English speakers in urban schools. Sixth-grade students (399 LM learners, 182 native English speakers) were screened for difficulties, using a standardized measure of reading comprehension. Of these, 262 students…

Recent developments in cognitive science and linguistics provide strong evidence that understanding decision-making processes in higher education requires close attention to not only rational and consciously controlled dynamics but also those aspects that are less consciously controlled than previously assumed. When deciding to favor or reject…

This short-term longitudinal research examined the relationships among middle school students' perceptions of school environment, school engagement, and academic achievement. Participants were from a representative, ethnically diverse, urban sample of 1,046 students. The findings supported the theoretical conceptualization of three different, but…

The authors investigate how conversational routines, or the practices by which groups structure work-related talk, function in teacher professional communities to forge, sustain, and support learning and improvement. Audiotaped and videotaped records of teachers' work group interactions, supplemented by interviews and material artifacts, were…

This article reports on research with one Black male elementary school teacher in Toronto and draws on feminist, queer, and antiracist analytic perspectives to raise important questions about the discourse of teachers as role models. The voice of this teacher is used to challenge discourses about role modeling in their capacity to address…

This article examines the impact of single-sex schooling on a range of academic outcomes for a sample of British people born in 1958. In terms of the overall level of qualifications achieved, single-sex schooling is positive for girls at age 16 but neutral for boys, while at later ages, single-sex schooling is neutral for both sexes. However,…

This two-site, qualitative case study examined how the Chicago and Boston Public School Districts alternatively prepared new teachers through partnerships with private, nonprofit urban teacher residencies. Drawing on urban regime analysis and resource dependence theory, the study asked how the reform partners defined "teacher quality" and how the…

In both the United States and Europe, concerns have been raised about whether preservice and in-service training succeeds in equipping teachers with the professional knowledge they need to deliver consistently high-quality instruction. This article investigates the significance of teachers' content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge for…

Student opposition in school is traditionally cast in terms of individual dispositions, whereby particular students or groups of students are said to "resist" or "oppose" school structures and identities aligned with the dominant cultural group. The author examined instead how the teacher and students in a low-track mathematics classroom jointly…

Virtually all states require teachers to undergo licensure testing before participation in the public school labor market. This article analyzes the information these tests provide about teacher effectiveness. The authors find that licensure tests have different predicative validity for student achievement by teacher race. They also find that…