Test scores are commonly reported in a small number of ordered categories. Examples of such reporting include state accountability testing, Advanced Placement tests, and English proficiency tests. This paper introduces and evaluates methods for estimating achievement gaps on a familiar standard-deviation-unit metric using data from these ordered categories alone. These methods hold two practical advantages over alternative achievement gap metrics. First, they require only categorical...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Achievement Gap, Scores, Computation, Classification, Methods, Nonparametric...
The purpose of this paper is to clarify the assumptions that must be met if this--multiple site, multiple mediator--strategy, hereafter referred to as "MSMM," is to identify the average causal effects (ATE) in the populations of interest. The authors' investigation of the assumptions of the multiple-mediator, multiple-site IV model demonstrates that such models rely on a large number of non-trivial assumptions. Of most importance are the assumptions regarding the relationship between...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Research, Social Science Research, Research Design, Causal Models,...
The increasing availability of data from multi-site randomized trials provides a potential opportunity to use instrumental variables methods to study the effects of multiple hypothesized mediators of the effect of a treatment. We derive nine assumptions needed to identify the effects of multiple mediators when using site-by-treatment interactions to generate multiple instruments. Three of these assumptions are unique to the multiple-site, multiple-mediator case: 1) the assumption that the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Causal Models, Measures (Individuals), Research Design, Context Effect, Compliance...
In this paper we investigate whether the school desegregation produced by court-ordered desegregation plans persists when school districts are released from court oversight. Over 200 medium-sized and large districts were released from desegregation court orders from 1991 to 2009. We find that racial school segregation in these districts increased gradually following release from court order, relative to the trends in segregation in districts remaining under court order. These increases are more...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Desegregation Litigation, School Desegregation, School Districts, Public Schools,...
Instrumental variable estimators hold the promise of enabling researchers to estimate the effects of educational treatments that are not (or cannot be) randomly assigned but that may be affected by randomly assigned interventions. Examples of the use of instrumental variables in such cases are increasingly common in educational and social science research. The most commonly used instrumental variables estimator is two-stage least squares (2SLS). Many of the properties of the 2SLS estimator are...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Social Science Research, Least Squares Statistics, Computation, Correlation,...
Data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS) are used to examine the relationship between minimum competency testing and dropout rates. Proponents of such testing have argued that minimum competency tests provide incentives for schools and students, but opponents have argued that such tests lead to a low-level basic skills curriculum and increase dropout rates by discouraging low-scoring students from continuing in school. The focus is on eighth-grade testing, specifically tests...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Disadvantaged Youth, Dropout Rate, Dropout Research, Dropouts, Equal Education, Grade...
We explore the use of instrumental variables (IV) analysis with a multi-site randomized trial to estimate the effect of a mediating variable on an outcome in cases where it can be assumed that the observed mediator is the only mechanism linking treatment assignment to outcomes, as assumption known in the instrumental variables literature as the exclusion restriction. We use a random-coefficient IV model that allows both the impact of program assignment on the mediator (compliance with...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Statistical Bias, Statistical Analysis, Least Squares Statistics, Sampling,...
This paper considers the effect of high stakes promotion tests on early high school dropout patterns. Analysis of data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1988, a nationally representative survey of 8th grade students in the United States, indicates that the presence of an 8th grade promotion test requirement is strongly associated with an increased probability of dropping out. This association persists even after controlling for a moderate range of school and individual level...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Dropout Characteristics, Dropout Rate, Exit Examinations, Grade Point Average, High...
In this paper, the authors estimate the effect of a high school exit exam requirement (relative to no requirement) on students' academic achievement, persistence in high school, and graduation rates. They are particularly interested in the effects of the policy on the students who have low initial skill levels in high school. The study is based on data from four large California districts--Fresno, Long Beach, San Diego, and San Francisco Unified School Districts--to investigate the effects of...
Topics: ERIC Archive, High Schools, Graduation Rate, Academic Persistence, Graduation, Exit Examinations,...
This report describes recent patterns of racial enrollments in private K-12 schools in the United States. It includes data from the federal government's most recent Private School Survey, which covers 1997-98. Results indicate that segregation levels are quite high among private schools, particularly among Catholic and other religious private schools. Black-white and Latino-white segregation is greater among private schools than public schools. White students are more racially isolated in...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Asian American Students, Black Students, Catholic Schools, Elementary Secondary...
Ho and Reardon (2012) present methods for estimating achievement gaps when test scores are coarsened into a small number of ordered categories, preventing fine-grained distinctions between individual scores. They demonstrate that gaps can nonetheless be estimated with minimal bias across a broad range of simulated and real coarsened data scenarios. In this paper, we extend this previous work to obtain practical estimates of the imprecision imparted by the coarsening process and of the bias...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Achievement Gap, Performance Factors, Educational Practices, Scores, Measurement...
In this policy brief the authors summarize the findings from a study investigating the impact of the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) on California's lowest performing students. Utilizing longitudinal data from four large urban school districts, the authors compare students scheduled to graduate just before (2005) and after (2006-07) the exit exam became a requirement for graduation from California high schools. They find that the CAHSEE requirement has had no positive effects on...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Exit Examinations, Academic Persistence, Academic Achievement, Graduation, High...
Schools are under increasing pressure to reclassify their English learner (EL) students to "fluent English proficient" status as quickly as possible. This article examines timing to reclassification among Latino ELs in four distinct linguistic instructional environments: English immersion, transitional bilingual, maintenance bilingual, and dual immersion. Using hazard analysis and 12 years of data from a large school district, the study investigates whether reclassification timing,...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Hispanic American Students, Classification, Bilingual Education, Barriers, English...
A valuable extension of the single-rating regression discontinuity design (RDD) is a multiple-rating RDD (MRRDD). To date, four main methods have been used to estimate average treatment effects at the multiple treatment frontiers of an MRRDD: the "surface" method, the "frontier" method, the "binding-score" method, and the "fuzzy instrumental variables" method. This paper uses a series of simulations to evaluate the relative performance of each of these...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Regression (Statistics), Research Design, Quasiexperimental Design, Research...
Most research on the middle school transition focuses on developmental and psychological changes around the age of the transition, and investigates or discusses the impact of such changes on academic performance, motivation and behavior in schools. In addition to intrapersonal developmental changes that middle-school students experience, they also experience significant changes in school context and school experiences. What has been less studied however, is whether and how the transition from...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Achievement Gap, Student Promotion, Elementary School Students, Middle School...
There are nearly 14,000 school districts in the United States. Of these districts, there is very little information about the size of academic achievement gaps between whites and blacks and white and Hispanic students. This study was interested in district-level achievement patterns across the almost 14,000 school districts in the country because districts differ dramatically in their socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, and because districts have considerable influence over...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Achievement Gap, School Districts, Racial Differences, White Students, African...
How well do U.S. students read? In this article, Sean Reardon, Rachel Valentino, and Kenneth Shores rely on studies using data from national and international literacy assessments to answer this question. In part, the answer depends on the specific literacy skills assessed. The authors show that almost all U.S. students can "read" by third grade, if reading is defined as proficiency in basic procedural word-reading skills. But reading for comprehension--integrating background...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Literacy, Reading Skills, Developed Nations, Race, Middle School Students, Low Income...
The authors' goals in this study are to use both the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and state accountability test score data to (1) provide a detailed description of the magnitude and trends of state-level academic achievement gaps among cohorts of students entering school in the 1990s and 2000s; (2) investigate the extent to which patterns and trends in gaps vary among states; and (3) provide preliminary evidence regarding the impact of NCLB (No Child Left Behind) on...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Federal Legislation, Academic Achievement, National Competency Tests, Scores,...
To date, no studies have documented how much early childhood experiences have changed over time. In the current study, researchers use two large, nationally representative datasets of kindergarten entrants to document the following: (1) How have children's early childhood experiences changed between 1998 and 2010?; (2) To what extent have socioeconomic "gaps" in children's early experiences changed over time?; and (3) Did differential changes in early childhood experiences across...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Early Childhood Education, Kindergarten, Socioeconomic Status, Achievement Gap,...
"How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement" estimates the effects on student achievement of attending a New York City charter school rather than a traditional public school and investigates the characteristics of charter schools associated with the most positive effects on achievement. Because the report relies on an inappropriate set of statistical models to analyze the data, however, the results presented appear to overstate the cumulative effect of attending a charter...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Charter Schools, Academic Achievement, Achievement Gains, Achievement Rating,...
Recent policy changes in California's education system have opened up a unique opportunity to improve educational opportunities for the state's 1.4 million English learner students (ELs). The implementation of new state standards including new English Language Development standards will require major changes in teaching and learning for all students including ELs, while the Local Control Funding Formula gives districts that educate large numbers of ELs additional resources to improve the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, English Language Learners, Educational Opportunities, Outcomes of Education,...
This paper investigates the differences in academic achievement trajectories from elementary through middle school among English Learner students in four different instructional programs: English Immersion, Transitional Bilingual, Developmental Bilingual, and Dual Immersion programs. Comparing students with the same parental preferences but who attend different programs, we find that the ELA test scores of ELs in all bilingual programs grow at least as fast as, if not faster than those in...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Elementary School Students, Middle School Students, Academic Achievement, English...
