This study evaluates the effects of classroom peers on standardized testing achievement for all third- and fourth-grade students in the Philadelphia School District over 6 school years. With a comprehensive individual-and multilevel data set of all students matched to teachers, classrooms, and schools, two empirical strategies are employed. The…

Utilizing data from the National Center for Education Statistics Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), a multilevel model (Hierarchical Linear Model) was developed to examine the association of teacher/classroom and state level indicators on reported elementary social studies instructional time. Findings indicated that state testing policy was a…

This article contributes to an emerging body of literature on the impact of high stakes testing accountability policies on implementation and teaching practice. It uses a theory of implementation, sense-making, to highlight the process by which policy and context shape teacher decision making. We focus on teachers in bilingual classrooms in an…

This study captures the impact of school choice decisions by comparing the racial composition of the district schools students exited to the charter schools they entered. Charter school catchment areas are operationalized using a statewide student-level database to track school attendance patterns of individual students over 4 years. Charter…

Language ideologies shape educational practices in ways that can either limit or expand students' engagement with academic content. This article examines science lessons with third and fourth grade English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students, focusing on (a) regular lessons, in which the monolingual teacher speaks English while a…

Few school choice evaluations consider students who leave such programs, and fewer still consider the effects of leaving these programs as policy-relevant outcomes. Using a representative sample of students from the citywide voucher program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we analyze more than 1,000 students who leave the program during a 4-year period.…

We evaluate the impact of Success for All literacy instruction in grades 3 through 5 using data from the same cluster randomized trial used to evaluate effects in the earlier grades (K-2). In contrast to the early benefits, there is no effect on reading achievement in the later grades, either overall or for students and schools with high or low…

Accountability for students with disabilities who receive special education services is now a result of policy requirements in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004 and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. Together these pieces of federal legislation require that students participate in statewide…

The theory of action behind the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is that "shining a light" on subgroup performance will increase reading and math test scores for minority and disadvantaged students. Using a panel of all students in Grades 3 through 8 in North Carolina from 2000 to 2008 (N = 1.7 million students in 1,800 schools), the authors…

This article uses a regression discontinuity approach to study the influence of New York City's school grading policy on student math and English language arts (ELA) achievement. We find evidence that students in schools receiving a failing grade realized positive effects in English in the 1st year of sanction, but we find no statistically…

This paper provides practical guidance for researchers who are designing and analyzing studies that randomize schools--which comprise three levels of clustering (students in classrooms in schools)--to measure intervention effects on student academic outcomes when information on the middle level (classrooms) is missing. This situation arises…

We use data from one of the few states where information on curriculum adoptions is available--Indiana--to empirically evaluate differences in performance across three elementary-mathematics curricula. The three curricula that we evaluate were popular nationally during the time of our study, and two of the three remain popular today. We find large…

Many students with disabilities need to use accommodations to meaningfully access instruction and to be appropriately assessed. During the past decade, the use of assessment accommodations has dramatically increased the participation rates of students with disabilities in statewide testing. Assessment accommodations can be defined as "changes in…

Increasing teacher quality is a major objective of recent Cambodian education policy. In mathematics education literature, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has emerged as a critical component of teacher quality that is strongly linked to student achievement. In this study I use data from a large survey of Cambodian schools to investigate the…

The association between grade retention in first grade and passing the third grade state accountability tests, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) reading and math, was investigated in a sample of 769 students who were recruited into the study when they were in first grade. Of these 769 students, 165 were retained in first grade…