Although literacy skills have been associated with critical academic, social, and economic outcomes, most adolescents in the United States lack basic proficiency in reading comprehension. Experts in the field of adolescent literacy have identified affective components of reading (e.g., reading attitudes) as a critical topic in need of further research. Prior research has found a significant correlation between affective components of reading and reading comprehension, even after controlling for cognitive covariates (e.g., vocabulary). However, the bulk of this research has been limited to first language learners and children in the early grades. Therefore, this study extends the reading attitudes literature by examining these relationships among Latino adolescents, including those who speak English as a second language. Furthermore, reading attitudes has predicted reading comprehension growth among certain populations, although the mechanisms behind this relationship are unclear. This study theorizes that reading attitudes promotes reading development by facilitating incidental vocabulary acquisition through increased reader engagement and implicit strategy use. Therefore, this study also extends the literature by determining whether reading attitudes predicts vocabulary growth from September to June of ninth grade. Participants were 128 ninth grade students in a low-income, predominantly Latino high school. 24% spoke English only (EO), 26% were from Spanish-speaking homes but had been determined to be initially fluent-English-proficient (I-FEP) at enrollment, 21% were classified as "true" English learners (ELs) who had not yet attained proficiency in English, and 29% were former English learners who had been redesignated fluent-English-proficient (R-FEP). Reading attitudes were assessed using an adapted form of the Elementary Reading Attitudes Survey (ERAS), which contains both recreational (ERAS-R) and academic (ERAS-A) reading subscales. In a hierarchical regression analysis (HRA), the ERAS-R independently predicted reading comprehension after controlling for language group, vocabulary, and word reading ability (i.e., decoding, word recognition, and fluency). No language group interactions were detected. In a second HRA, the ERAS-R predicted students' vocabulary at the end of ninth grade after controlling for language group, prior vocabulary achievement, and word reading ability. However, reading attitudes only predicted vocabulary development for EO and R-FEP students, while no effect was present for I-FEP children and "true" ELs.

This study examines associations between teacher effectiveness in improving both students’ academic achievement and social-emotional skills. Using hierarchical linear modeling, a specific set of teacher practices were used to examine teacher effectiveness in both domains. Our results show that the average academic achievement residuals do not correlate with the average social-emotional residuals. However, some teaching characteristics—including teacher expectation, teacher-student relationship, and classroom discipline—significantly related to both academic achievement gains and social-emotional skill development, while some other practices significantly associated with only one domain. These findings suggest that even though there is no necessary association between teacher effectiveness in improving academic achievement along with social-emotional skills in general, teachers’ instructional and social-emotional practices can make differences in students’ academic and social-emotional development.

Abstract: This study examines ethnic differences in the effects of multiple types of parental involvement (PI) on high school graduation. PI is theorized to include four distinct dimensions: parent-child communication, school involvement, home supervision, and aspiration. These four dimensions can be broken into a total of 10 sub-dimensions. Factor analysis is used to construct latent variables representing the sub-dimensions, which are subsequently included in a logistic regression model with graduating vs. not graduating as the outcomes. The model is first run on the full sample of students and then on each of four ethnic groups to examine for ethnic differences in the effects.

The results show that mean levels of PI differ across ethnic groups for all ten sub-dimensions. Of the ethnic groups, Asian parents tend to be least involved in discussions of schooling progress and in providing advice on schooling, while White parents help with homework least. Asian and Hispanic parents tend to contact the school and participate in school activities less than White or Black parents. Moreover, Black parents tend to set more rules, while Asian parents set limits and privileges based on children's performance most.

The effect of PI on graduation also differs across ethnic groups. Parent participation in school activities impacts graduation positively among all ethnic groups. Asian children benefit most from parents' participation in school activities and Black children benefit least from it. However, while most other PI dimensions are significantly associated with graduation for White students, which is not the case for ethnic minorities.

Since Equality of Educational Opportunity was published in 1966, evidence has accumulated supporting the Coleman Report’s original finding that socioeconomically-segregated schools depress educational outcomes. Research over the past half century indicates that the socioeconomic composition (SEC) of a school – as measured by the average socioeconomic status (SES) of its students – is associated with student achievement and attainment above and beyond individual SES. In the context of growing income inequality and rising neighborhood and school segregation across the country, this study addressed gaps in the school effectiveness literature by examining the relationship between high school SEC and sequential outcomes of college enrollment, persistence, and graduation. Drawing on a nationally-representative sample of public high school students from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, this quantitative study employed a multilevel multiple group analysis approach to unpack the SEC effect by investigating differential effects across SEC settings and the mechanisms through which SEC is theorized to impact student outcomes. Results indicate that high school SEC has a robust association with success along the entire college pipeline; students who attended higher SEC schools were more likely to enroll at 4-year institutions than not enroll (ES = .16), to enroll at 4-year than 2-year institutions (ES = .19), to persist into the third year (ES = .10), and to ultimately graduate with a bachelor’s degree (ES = .13). Effect sizes were consistent for students regardless of individual SES. The distal effect of SEC was due in part to its indirect effect through mediating factors of college readiness and institutional start level. SEC could be partially explained by the underlying mechanisms of peer influences and school practices – especially the effect of close friends and the normative peer environment. Overall, the findings from this study suggest that addressing the negative long-term impact of class-based school segregation on college access and completion necessitates the integration of public schools along socioeconomic lines.

Researchers report that early intervention can reduce and eliminate reading difficulties for early readers. What Works Clearinghouse evaluated several phonological awareness interventions, but only one had positive effects on alphabetics and one had potentially positive effects on phonological processing and alphabetics. Additionally, the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that only 36 percent of fourth grade students performed at or above the proficiency level of reading in 2015. Researchers must continue rigorous evaluations to identify effective interventions for students in primary grades. Researchers and educators have implemented Phonological Awareness and Vocabulary Intensive Intervention (PAVII), an early literacy intervention, but no study has tested its efficacy on a native English speaking population using a rigorous causal research design, and no study assessed treatment acceptability. The purpose of this study was to evaluate this intervention’s effects on first grade students’ phonemic awareness and phonics skills and to evaluate treatment integrity and treatment acceptability. The participants were selected from a suburban elementary school in Southern California. The efficacy of the intervention was tested using a regression discontinuity design. The treatment integrity and acceptability outcomes were high, although the treatment acceptability results were not as high as anticipated. The RDD results indicated that PAVII did not have a casual main effect on students’ phonemic awareness or phonics skills. However, the effect of the intervention on phonemic awareness skills was moderated by students' initial phonemic awareness: The intervention had significantly greater effects on students with initially higher phonemic awareness skills. This suggests that the effect of PAVII on phonemic awareness skills depends on students' initial phonemic awareness skill level. Future research is needed to examine whether PAVII combined with direct phonics instruction improves the intervention's efficacy.

This study examines how gains in mathematics achievement are related to executive processing functions and student sociodemographic characteristics across schools’ national representative longitudinal sample of children in kindergarten (K) followed through grade four in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of 2010.

Mathematics trajectories were nonlinear, with greater gains in early versus later grades and small drops each summer. Children entering K with lower math demonstrated steeper gains over time. Relative to Caucasian children, Hispanic and African American children entered K with lower math. Hispanic children had higher growth rates whereas African American children had lower growth rates. Girls entered K with higher math, but boys gained more over time. Lower SES was associated with lower math but also steeper increases. Demographic factors explained a larger proportion of between-school differences in mathematics achievement than within-school differences in initial levels and long-term gains but not summer drops (66.23% versus 8.11% of variance at K; 17.02% versus 4.55% of variance in gains; 20% versus 0% of variance in summer drops). Similarly, shaped trajectories and demographic effects were found for working memory, while the cognitive flexibility trajectory (measured only from 2nd grade) was a more linear. Critically, just as lower math scores in K were associated with steeper growth, lower working memory in K was also associated with steeper trajectories. In addition, positive associations were observed between working memory and math in K, trajectories of working memory and cognitive flexibility were strongly associated with trajectories of mathematics achievement. A similar pattern was observed for cognitive flexibility. These inclusions of demographic covariates did not alter these associations. Overall, these findings bolster the independent importance of executive function and sociodemographic factors, with the latter explaining a large amount of between-school variability. Education stakeholders such as teachers, school administrations, and school district can rely on the research findings in designing practical models of teaching mathematics that will take into consideration the role of sociodemographic factors as well as executive functioning among students, thereby improving their overall performance.

The objective of this research was to identify relationships that are associated with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduation rates among the California State University (CSU) system. Specifically targeting resource allocation strategies and institutional characteristics, this investigation examined relationships unique within the STEM pipeline and success rates of underrepresented minority (URM, including Black, Latinx, and Southeast Asian) STEM students. The dataset for this investigation was constructed from three public access sources, with research questions targeting aspects unique to public comprehensive universities in California. The statistical technique employed was a piecewise-multilevel growth model used to examine relationships among resource allocation strategies, institutional characteristics, the Great Recession, and URM STEM graduation rates with overall STEM graduation rates.

Analysis revealed a positive relationship of overall STEM graduation rates to student services support, a negative relationship to institutional support, and no significant relationship found with federal training grant support. Latnix STEM graduation rates showed the strongest positive relationship with overall STEM graduation rates, and both Black and Southeast Asian showing a positive relationship but to a lesser degree. The unique context of comprehensive institutions highlights the need for decision-makers to evaluate their resource allocation strategies and possibly divert more resources to student services support over instructional support. This research clearly highlights the importance of better understanding the relationship between institutional efforts and STEM student outcomes.

Students in the United States are highly mobile. Previous research has shown that the majority of students in the United States change schools between grades 1 and 12 for reasons other than promotion from one level to another (e.g., elementary to middle school.). Research also has found that student mobility is generally detrimental to student achievement. Despite this evidence, the issue of student mobility has not received much attention from educational researchers, practitioners, or policy makers.

In this report we examine student mobility among California Latino adolescents. Student mobility may be especially important in California because of its highly mobile population. Latinos are the largest and fastest growing segment of the state population. According to California Department of Finance estimates, the Latino public-school population is projected to triple in size between 1986 and 2006, while the non-Latino public-school population is projected to decrease (see Figure 1.1). Consequently, if student mobility can be problematic for both students and schools, as previous research suggest, it is especially important to understand the nature of mobility among the Latino population.

Using longitudinal data on two samples of California students—the first a group of 8th grade students who were surveyed over a sex-year period from 1988 to 1994; and the second a group of low-income, urban Latino 7th grade students who were first studied over a six-year period from 1990 to 1996—this study examined the incidence, causes, and consequences of student mobility, particularly during high school. Throughout this study we examine differences between Latino and non-Latino white students, as well as differences among Latino students. Here we summarize some of the major findings of this study.