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Middle schools
Shine a Light: The U.S. Federal Government Should Increase Access to Educational Administrative Data
Topics: MethodsThe Institute of Educational Sciences invested substantial resources into the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems grant program. These grants helped states convert their educational records to longitudinal datasets for research and evaluation. However, external researchers still have unreliable… more →
Post-pandemic achievement recovery based on student characteristics and district-level policies
Topics: Student LearningIt is well-established that student achievement has declined dramatically since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, less is known how these patterns may vary by developmental timing of exposure to the pandemic and how district-level policies may have influenced student recovery.
Parents’ Biased Beliefs and Competitive Investments in Education: A Field Experiment
Topics: Families and CommunitiesUsing a field experiment in China, we demonstrate that parental investment decisions are affected by their beliefs about their peers’ investment levels, and that they often hold biased beliefs about these levels. When provided information about the true distribution of tutoring hours invested… more →
Family Language Transmission Under Institutional Language Regimes Shapes Adolescent Mental Health Through Peers
Topics: Student Well-BeingIn many societies, institutional languages shape participation, recognition, and belonging, while families transmit language backgrounds across generations. These inherited backgrounds may contribute to children’s communication and, once children enter shared peer environments, to the… more →
Long-term Consequences of Early Access to Educational Opportunity
Topics: Student LearningThis paper examines the long-term consequences of tracking in middle school. Using longitudinal administrative data from a large, urban school district and regression and quasi-experimental matching methods, we find that students who had the opportunity to take advanced math earned higher math… more →
The Trade-off between Quality and Quantity: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Tutoring
Topics: Student LearningHigh-dosage tutoring has the potential to substantially raise adolescent academic achievement. However, at scale, schools may not have the financial ability to deliver small-group tutoring frequently. In this paper, I test the relative importance of group size (quality) versus tutoring frequency… more →
What is the impact of changing schools on the academic outcomes of elementary and middle school students?
Topics: Student LearningWe study how different kinds of school changes shape achievement in grades 4–8 using data from six California districts (2016–17 through 2019–20). We estimate the effects of structural (promotional), nonstructural summer, and midyear moves and find that structural and summer moves have near-zero… more →
School Enrollment Shifts Five Years After the Pandemic
Topics: School ChoiceThe pandemic induced a substantial enrollment shift away from public schools in fall 2020 and a partial return of students in fall 2021, leaving longer-term impacts unclear. We use Massachusetts state- and district-level data to explore enrollment patterns five years after the pandemic’s onset.… more →
The Extent of Student Mobility Among Vulnerable Groups in California
Nonstructural student mobility—school changes not tied to grade-level promotion—is common and consequential yet remains underexamined in recent research. This paper analyzes the incidence, disparities, and predictors of nonstructural school mobility using longitudinal data from six… more →
Impacts of Oversubscribed Boston Pre-K Programs through Middle School
Christina Weiland, Tiffany Wu, Rebecca Unterman, Anna Shapiro, Shekinah Lightner, Thomas Staines, Annie Taylor.Topics: Student LearningIn this pre-registered study, we explored the impacts of Boston Pre-K on children’s educational trajectories, school progress/engagement, and academic achievement in late elementary and middle school using lotteries for oversubscribed schools in 2007-2011 (N=3,092 students; 24% of all applicants… more →
How Does Early Achievement Predict Within-Year Student Mobility? Longitudinal Evidence from Missouri
Topics: Student LearningStudent mobility that occurs within a school year may be especially disruptive for student outcomes, yet little is known regarding the predictors of within-year mobility. In particular, research has yet to comprehensively examine the role of student achievement in predicting within-year student… more →
Peer Income Exposure Across the Income Distribution
Michelle Spiegel, Leah Clark, Thurston Domina, Emily K. Penner, Paul Hanselman, Paul Yoo, Andrew M. Penner.Topics: Families and CommunitiesChildren from families across the income distribution attend public schools, making schools and classrooms potential sites for interaction between more- and less-affluent children. However, limited information exists regarding the extent of economic integration in these contexts. We merge… more →
The Peer Effect of Persistence on Student Achievement
Topics: Families and CommunitiesLittle is known about the impact of peer personality on human capital formation. The paper studies the impact of peers’ persistence, a personality trait reflecting perseverance in the face of challenges and setbacks, on student achievement. Exploiting student-classroom random assignments in middle… more →
Integrated Student Support Intervention Mitigates the Adverse Impact of School Mobility on Middle School Students' Achievement and Behavior
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceSchool mobility, compounding socioeconomic inequities, can undermine academic achievement and behavior, particularly during middle school years. This study investigates the effect of a school-based integrated student support intervention – City Connects – on the achievement and behavior of… more →
Stay-at-Home Peer Mothers and Gender Norms: Short-run Effects on Educational Outcomes
Topics: Families and CommunitiesIncreased exposure to gender-role information affects a girl's educational performance. Utilizing the classroom randomization in Chinese middle schools, we find that the increased presence of stay-at-home peer mothers significantly reduces a girl's performance in mathematics. This exposure also… more →
The Academic Effects of Moving to Middle School on Students with Disabilities Relative to their General Education Peers
Topics: Student LearningMiddle school transitions are increasingly required, despite documented negative effects on general education students (GENs). We explore if and how the move to middle school differentially affects students with disabilities (SWDs), a large and low-performing group of students. Using an… more →
U.S. Middle School Mathematics Instruction, 2016
Topics: Student LearningIn recent decades, U.S. education leaders have advocated for more intellectually ambitious mathematics instruction in classrooms. Evidence about whether more ambitious mathematics instruction has filtered into contemporary classrooms, however, is largely anecdotal. To address this issue, we… more →
The Effects of Middle School Remediation on Postsecondary Success: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Florida
Topics: Student LearningHigh school graduation rates in the United States are at an all-time high, yet many of these graduates are deemed not ready for postsecondary coursework when they enter college. This study examines the short-, medium-, and long-term effects of remedial courses in middle school using a regression… more →
Catching up or Falling Behind: Measuring Middle School Achievement Trajectories for College Readiness
Topics: Student LearningTags: College readiness, Middle schoolsThis study presents a framework that uses academic trajectories in the middle grades for identifying students in need of intervention and providing targeted support. We apply a set of academic college readiness benchmarks to rich longitudinal data for more than 360,000 students in 5900 schools… more →
Heterogeneous Effects of Early Algebra across California Middle Schools
Topics: Student LearningHow should schools assign students to more rigorous math courses so as best to help their academic outcomes? We identify several hundred California middle schools that used 7th grade test scores to place students into 8th grade Algebra courses, and use a regression discontinuity design to… more →