Sex-­gender differences in health are a function of social and biological factors and their interplay over the life course. A large body of research documents sex-­gender as a determinant of health behavior and outcomes. Far less scholarship examines how these differences are reflected in physiologic function in young adulthood. Using nationally representative, longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we examine the relationship between gender and biological function in young adulthood. We also examine the contribution of social and economic circumstances in childhood and early adulthood to gender differences in health. The findings reveal strong gender differences in inflammation and immune function, which are robust to the inclusion of many indicators of the social environment.

Substantial teacher turnover poses a challenge to staffing public schools with effective teachers. The scope of the teacher retention challenge across school districts, however, remains poorly defined. Applying consistent data practices and analytical techniques to administrative data sets from 16 urban districts, we document substantial cross-district variation in teacher retention rates. Observable characteristics do not easily explain this cross-district variation. We also find considerable cross-district variation in key results from the retention literature, including the relationship between retention and both experience and estimated effectiveness. Finally, we explore the influence of temporary leaves of absence and cross-district, within-state movement on retention estimates. Accounting for cross-district movement matters little, while accounting for temporary leaves matters a great deal in many districts and tends to exacerbate cross-district differences in retention rates.

Family socioeconomic status (SES) and child health are so strongly related that scholars have speculated child health to be an important pathway through which a cycle of poverty is reproduced across generations. Despite increasing recognition that SES and health work reciprocally and dynamically over the life course to produce inequality, research has yet to address how these two pathways simultaneously shape children’s development. Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and marginal structural models, we ask three questions: (1) how does the reciprocal relationship between socioeconomic disadvantage and child health affect estimates of each circumstance on children’s cognitive development?; (2) how do their respective effects vary with age?; and (3) do family SES and child health have differential effects on cognitive development across population subgroups? The results show that the negative effects of socioeconomic disadvantage and poor health are insensitive to their reciprocal relationships over time. We find divergent effects of socioeconomic disadvantage and poor health on children’s cognitive trajectories, with a widening pattern for family SES effects and a leveling-off pattern for child health effects. Finally, the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage are similar across all racial/ethnic groups, while the effects of child health are largely driven by white children. We discuss theoretical and policy implications of these findings for future research.

In response to U.S. federal mandates to increase the presence of underrepresented populations in prevention research, investigators have increasingly focused on using culturally sensitive research practices. However, scholars have rarely discussed these practices in terms of a larger culturally sensitive framework. Further, while the literature has explored how culturally sensitive approaches can be employed in a variety of methods, there has been little examination of how to incorporate such approaches into experimental designs. In this paper, we explain how we incorporated a culturally sensitive framework in a cluster randomized field trial with over 3000 predominantly low-income Latino families, utilizing an intervention designed to improve social relations and enhance family functioning. We offer conceptual and practical examples to guide other researchers who want to adopt a similar approach in their research designs. In addition, we discuss the benefits of forging local partnerships throughout the research process to ensure respect for racial and ethnic minorities participating in social and behavioral experimental studies. We conclude with practical considerations for utilizing a culturally sensitive framework to advance prevention programs, policies, and practices among underrepresented groups in order to achieve the ultimate goal of addressing the traditional underrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities in research.

Prior research suggests that summer learning loss among low-income children contributes to income-based gaps in achievement and educational attainment. We present results from a randomized experiment of a summer mathematics program conducted in a large, high-poverty urban public school district. Children in the third to ninth grade (N = 263) were randomly assigned to an offer of an online summer mathematics program, the same program plus a free laptop computer, or the control group. Being randomly assigned to the program plus laptop condition caused children to experience significantly higher reported levels of summer home mathematics engagement relative to their peers in the control group. Treatment and control children performed similarly on distal measures of academic achievement. We discuss implications for future research.

Older sisters in Latino, immigrant‐origin families in the United States bear significant caretaking responsibilities for their siblings, especially regarding their siblings’ educations. Young women in Nashville, Tennessee, frame their same‐generation caretaking commitments and educational expectations for their siblings in intergenerational terms—what I term the descendant bargain. This intergenerational framing reveals how elder sisters position their siblingship—and their educational carework—as vital to forging socioeconomic mobility and kinship obligations, labor often understood as the domain of parents. Youthful siblings’ educational carework is a critical kinship practice that demonstrates the central role of youth in making kinship and remaking genealogical generation in immigrant families.

Much debate surrounding teacher quality has focused on students’ standardized test scores, but recent federal and state initiatives have emphasized the use of multiple measures to evaluate teacher quality, including classroom observations. In this study, we explore differences across school districts in the relationship between student achievement outcomes and the observed quality of teachers’ instruction. Using data from 298 elementary mathematics teachers in five urban US districts, we examine relationships between teachers’ performance on the Mathematical Quality of Instruction observation instrument and their students’ scores on both state standardized and researcher-developed tests. We find that these relationships differ across school districts. We explore the extent to which differences in skills and expectations for students across tests may explain this variability. An improved understanding of the relationship between classroom observations and student tests may help districts to better support teachers in developing their instructional effectiveness.

Excluded from public financial aid because of their immigration status, undocumented youth in the United States frequently depend on private schools’ merit‐based financial aid. This aid, which operates according to a neoliberal logic, provides them with a critical pathway to tertiary education and potentially to institutional and national inclusion. Yet this private‐sector inclusion ultimately harms their sense of public belonging, as shown by the experiences of undocumented Latino youth in Nashville, Tennessee. Students who do not meet the schools’ high standards cannot access either institutional or civic inclusion; those who can meet the standards experience inclusion as contingent on continued excellence. Their experiences reveal the critical role that private institutions play in mediating undocumented people's national inclusion and how neoliberal merit restricts the terms of this inclusion.

Recent education reform efforts commonly aim at improving teacher effectiveness. One study of three large districts finds that they spent approximately $18,000 for professional development for each teacher each year. Numerous education agencies, such as the District of Columbia Public Schools with its IMPACT effectiveness system for school-based personnel, and the state of Tennessee with its Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model, have invested substantial resources in teacher evaluation and feedback. These policies arose, at least in part, from the recognition that teachers affect not only student learning in the short-run, but also long-run outcomes such as college attendance and earnings as adults. A recent study following more than two million students estimated that having a teacher in grades four through eight with average effectiveness, instead of one who is among the five percent least effective, would increase a students' lifetime income by more than $250,000. Teachers also affect the likelihood that a student attends any college, attends a higher-ranked college, does not have children as a teenager, and saves more for retirement. Most of the researchers examining the effects of teachers on student test performance have concluded that math teachers have a greater effect on students' performance on math exams than English language arts teachers have on students' performance on English exams. For example, studies in North Carolina and New York City found that math teachers had approximately a 35 percent greater impact on test scores in their field than did English teachers. Nonetheless, the research on the long-term effects of teachers finds that English teachers have at least as much of an effect as math teachers. For example, that same study following 2.5 million students found that an English teacher who raises students' reading test scores by the same amount as a math teacher raises students' math test scores has an impact on long-term life outcomes approximately 1.7 times that of the math teacher. Even though, on average, English teachers don't increase English language arts test scores as much as math teachers increase math scores, English teachers have as strong an effect on students' later lives.

This paper provides empirical evidence on how China’s transition from the Boston mechanism to the Chinese parallel mechanism (a simplified version of the Deferred Acceptance mechanism), along with changes to the information available to students on their entrance exam performance when they submit their college preferences, affect the academic match between colleges and students. Using data on students admitted to Chinese colleges from 2005 to 2011, we characterize the general patterns of mismatch between colleges and students based on students’ scores on China’s National College Entrance Exam and find evidence of substantial overmatch and undermatch. Results from a generalized difference-in-differences model indicate that switching from the Boston mechanism to the Chinese parallel mechanism lowered the probability of mismatch by approximately 6%. Allowing students to submit their college preferences after learning their exam scores rather than before the exam reduced the probability of mismatch by 18%.