This review examines four books that may offer some insight into what the discussion about educational policy, reform, and performance may look like after the era of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Collectively, "The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling" by Jal Mehta,…

The authors explored trajectories of perceived discrimination over a 6-year period (five assessments in 6th-11th grade) in relation to academic, behavioral, and psychological adjustment in 8th and 11th grades. They distinguished discrimination from adults versus peers in addition to overt versus covert discrimination from peers. The sample…

Recent research finds that grade span affects academic achievement, but only speculates about the mechanisms. In this prepublication version of the study, we examine one commonly cited mechanism, the top dog/bottom dog phenomenon, which states that students at the top of a grade span ("top dogs") have better experiences than those at the…

We use quantile treatment effects estimation to examine the consequences of the random-assignment New York City School Choice Scholarship Program (NYCSCSP) across the distribution of student achievement. Our analyses suggest that the program had negligible and statistically insignificant effects across the skill distribution. In addition to…

Peer influence and social interactions can give rise to spillover effects in which the exposure of one individual may affect outcomes of other individuals. Even if the intervention under study occurs at the group or cluster level as in group-randomized trials, spillover effects can occur when the mediator of interest is measured at a lower level…