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Middle schools
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 →
Does School Context Moderate the Relationship between Student Mobility and Academic Performance? Longitudinal Evidence from Missouri
Topics: Student LearningStudent mobility is highly prevalent in the United States and has negative impacts on students’ academic performance. Within-year mobility may be especially disruptive. However, research on the impacts of within-year mobility is limited, and less is known how impacts may vary across different… 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 →
Who Transfers and Where do They Go? Identifying Risk Factors Across Student, School, and Neighborhood Characteristics
Takeshi Terada, Jason Jabbari, Yung Chun, Richard Hall, Ethan Greenstein, Margaret K. Powers, Somalis Chy.Topics: Student LearningResearch demonstrates student mobility, or students transferring schools, significantly affects student academic outcomes, making it a critical concern for policymakers and practitioners. Within-school-year transfers, in particular, often reflect sudden, unexpected circumstances. However,… more →
Peer Income Exposure Across the Income Distribution
Michelle Spiegel, Leah Clark, Thurston Domina, Emily 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 →