The purpose of this article is to comment on the prior article entitled "Examining Instruction, Achievement and Equity with NAEP mathematics data," by Sarah Theule Lubienski. That article claims that a prior article by the author suffered from three weaknesses: (1) An attempt to justify No Child Left Behind (NCLB); (2) drawing causal inferences…

No Child Left Behind calls for schools to close the achievement gap between races in math and reading. One possible way for schools to do so is to encourage their teachers to engage in practices that disproportionately benefit their minority students. The current study applies the technique of Hierarchical Linear Modeling to a nationally…

Studied the possibility of using large-scale data and methods to study classroom practices in reading comprehension using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Findings suggest that such studies are both feasible and necessary. (SLD)

Explored the link between classroom practices and student academic performance by applying multilevel modeling to the 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress in mathematics. Findings show that the effects of classroom practices, when added to other teacher characteristics, are comparable in size to those of student background, suggesting…