Four-day school weeks are becoming increasingly common in the U.S., but their effect on achievement is not well-understood. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we conduct the most representative student-level analysis to date of the effects of four-day weeks on student achievement and within-year growth using NWEA MAP Growth data. We…

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the US but we know little about how Asian immigration has affected cities, neighborhoods and schools. This paper studies white flight from Asian arrivals in high-socioeconomic-status Californian school districts from 2000-2016 using initial settlement patterns and national immigrant flows to…

Inter-district racial and socioeconomic segregation continue to affect students' educational opportunities. Housing mobility programs provide a way for low-income families to access lower-poverty and higher-performing schools in nearby districts. However, changing schools is also disruptive for students. Through interviews with 67 low-income Black…

In this study (n = 5037) we further investigated the construct validity of the Georgia Brief School Climate Inventory (GBS). Despite containing ordinal items (e.g., ordered-responses), the GBS has only been examined using linear approaches. To fill this void, we employed confirmatory item factor analysis (IFA) to examine the factor structure…

To date, there is a paucity of research that examines differences between charter schools that operate in suburban and nonsuburban contexts. This article examines whether students in suburban charter schools perform better or worse than their counterparts in traditional public schools or students in urban charter schools. Boasting the largest and…

There is a growing body of research that suggests that video-based interventions, such as video modeling and video prompting, are effective tools for teaching academic skills to struggling learners. This study used a single subject, multiple-baseline-across-subjects design to evaluate whether a video-prompting intervention could effectively assist…

Background/Context: In the field of education, the lens of agency has provided a valuable conceptual alternative to deterministic portrayals of schools as oppressive institutions where teachers and students have little power over the conditions in which they teach and learn. A number of studies have investigated teacher and student agency, but few…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among collective efficacy factors, as measured by the Illinois 5Essentials Survey, and college readiness scores, as reported by American College Testing (ACT), for high schools in the state of Illinois. The 5Essentials have been considered crucial to school success and therefore used to…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the Marzano Focused School Leader and Teacher Evaluation Models impacted school leader and teacher effectiveness to increase student proficiency and growth. This quantitative, non-experimental study was conducted using existing data in all middle schools in a large suburban school district in…

School District Effectiveness Research (SDER) works to identify unusually effective organizations for in-depth qualitative study that significantly outperform peer districts over multiple years. Yet, critiques of SDER include a focus on cross-sectional data, individual states, and percent proficient metrics. Here, we analyze the Stanford Education…

To enhance society through equitable educational attainment, efforts are being made in school districts to investigate practices and student data to provide more equitable opportunities for the students and families they serve. Given the importance of school leaders and their impact on student achievement and school climate (Bass & Riggio,…

This article addresses what we are calling "the gaps," the divergent and contextual understandings of "opportunity gap" and "achievement gap" evident in interviews with principals and school district leaders. Drawing from a sample of 22 interviews in urban, inner-ring suburban, and outer-ring suburban schools in a…

The researcher incorporated an evidence-based Student Success Skills program, to see the impact it made on attendance and achievement rates for a 5th grade classroom, in a suburban elementary school in the Atlanta, GA area. The results show that the Student Success Skills program made no impact on the students when examining absences and…

Although numerous studies have examined the relative performance of charter and traditional public schools, as well as the competitive effects that charters may have on their district neighbors, to our knowledge, no prior study has addressed whether overall achievement increases as the "market share" of charter schools rises.…

The departure of an effective school leader can influence staff turnover and student achievement for several years. With school systems facing an unprecedented public health crisis due to COVID-19, principal retention is a key area of concern for many local and state education agencies. The Regional Educational Laboratory West undertook this study…