Nationwide, K-12 students designated as English language learners (ELLs) must learn both language and content simultaneously, and ELLs score far below the national average in math achievement. Many educators have suggested that identifying or developing teachers with skills specific to ELLs' instructional needs may be critical to addressing this challenge. However, the evidence base to test this assertion is sparse. This study seeks to identify the characteristics and learning experiences of general education teachers who are differentially effective at promoting math achievement among ELLs compared to non-ELLs. Our analyses indicate that individual teachers can learn specific skills that make them more effective with ELL students. In particular, while generic years of teaching experience do not differentially affect gains for ELLs compared to non-ELLs, specific prior experience teaching ELLs predicts improvements in novice teachers' differential instructional effectiveness with ELLs. We also find that both in-service and pre-service training focused on ELL-specific instructional strategies are associated with higher gains for a teacher's ELLs relative to their non-ELLs. The findings of this study provide valuable new evidence in support of the notion that general education teachers can develop useful ELL-specific instructional skills, informing efforts by educators and policymakers to improve the quality of instruction that ELLs receive.

The relatively low status of teaching as a profession is often given as a factor contributing to the difficulty of recruiting teachers, the middling performance of American students on international assessments, and the well-documented decline in the relative academic ability of teachers through the 1990s. Since the turn of the 21st century, however, a number of federal, state, and local teacher accountability policies have been implemented toward improving teacher quality over the objections of some who argue the policies will decrease quality. In this paper we analyze 25 years of data on the academic ability of teachers in New York State and document that since 1999 the academic ability of both individuals certified and those entering teaching has steadily increased. These gains are widespread and have resulted in a substantial narrowing of the differences in teacher academic ability between high and low poverty schools and between white and minority teachers. We interpret these gains as evidence that the status of teaching is improving.

Highlights The effects of increasing class size on student outcomes and persistence is analyzed in online courses. A quasi-random field experiment in conjunction with a fixed-effects strategy provides plausibly credible causal estimates. Small online class size changes do not lead to differences in student performance as measured by grades or persistence in college. No heterogeneity in results is found based on the types of assignments offered in the class and the academic discipline of the class. The large sample size allows for precise estimates that rule out economically meaningful effects. Class size is a first-order consideration in the study of education cost and effectiveness. Yet little is known about the effects of class size on student outcomes in online college classes, even though online courses have become commonplace in many institutions of higher education. We study a field experiment in which college students were quasi-randomly assigned to either regular sized classes or slightly larger classes. Regular classes had, on average, 31 students and treatment classes were, on average, ten percent larger. The experiment was conducted at DeVry University, one of the nation's largest for-profit postsecondary institutions, and included over 100,000 student course enrollments in nearly 4,000 classes across 111 different undergraduate and graduate courses. We examine class size effects on student success in the course and subsequent persistence in college. We find little evidence of effects on average or for a range of course types. Given the large sample, our estimates are precise, suggesting that small class size changes have little impact in online settings.

Educational policymakers struggle to find ways to improve the quality of the teacher workforce. The early career period represents a unique opportunity to identify struggling teachers, examine the likelihood of future improvement, and make strategic pre-tenure investments in improvement as well as dismissals to increase teaching quality. To date, only a little is known about the dynamics of teacher performance in the first five years. This paper asks how much teachers vary in performance improvement during their first five years of teaching and to what extent initial job performance predicts later performance. We find that, on average, initial performance is quite predictive of future performance, far more so than typically measured teacher characteristics. Predictions are particularly powerful at the extremes. We employ these predictions to explore the likelihood of personnel actions that inappropriately distinguish performance when such predictions are mistaken as well as the much less discussed costs of failure to distinguish performance when meaningful differences exist. The results have important consequences for improving the quality of the teacher workforce.

Promesa Boyle Heights, a neighborhood-level collaborative in Los Angeles, works to deliberately develop relationships, coordination, and alignment across multiple partners to benefit young people and families – with positive, measurable results. One unique aspect of Promesa is the substantive engagement of parents, youth, and residents as key stakeholders, decision-makers, and owners of the work. This engagement is too often missing in collaborative education and collective impact efforts, but lays crucial groundwork for ongoing support, sustainability, and success.

This study by AISR, with support from the Ford Foundation, was conducted with the hope that an exploration of the processes, structures, and belief systems of Promesa Boyle Heights, as well as the lessons learned by the collaborative, would be of value to those working to foster meaningful collaboration across the educational ecosystem.

Although 11% (6.4 million) American children are diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the role of ADHD severity in shaping the association between ADHD diagnosis and academic achievement is not understood. Using a nationally-representative sample of 7830 U.S. kindergartners from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, we use regression and propensity score matching to compare diagnosed (N = 350) and undiagnosed children who are cognitively, behaviorally, and demographically similar. Diagnosed children with less severe ADHD-related behaviors on average scored lower in reading (−0.30 SD) and math (−0.22 SD) than their undiagnosed peers – a difference two times larger than that between diagnosed and undiagnosed children with more severe ADHD-related behaviors. Pharmacological treatment did not attenuate most of this “diagnostic labeling effect” among children with less severe ADHD-related behaviors. Negative factors associated with an ADHD diagnosis may outweigh potential benefits for achievement among children with less severe ADHD-related behaviors, even those receiving treatment.

We hypothesize that the manner in which stereotype threat affects college grade achievement is mediated by institutional context as well as individual characteristics. Drawing on a sample of black students from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen we find weak and inconsistent evidence that institutional characteristics influence the operation of stereotype threat. We find more consistent evidence to indicate that the effect of stereotype threat is conditioned by individual factors such as skin color, multiracial origins, and an integrated upbringing. Most of the effect on grade achievement occurs through the internalization pathway, in which the internalization of negative stereotypes leads to disinvestment manifested by a reduction in academic effort. The reduction in work effort, in turn, lowers grades. We also find evidence that immigrant origin confers protection from the negative effects of stereotype threat through both internalization and externalization mechanisms, though the ultimate effect of grade achievement is rather small.

Despite the enormous size of the urban population, political scientists have very little knowledge of the capacity for substantive representation in large cities. This article develops and tests models of urban representation based on the deliberative democracy theoretical framework. Focusing on school districts in Los Angeles County, this article uses a unique survey of school district superintendents from within the largest county in the United States to develop a comparative index measure of deliberative democracy. The results from this article show that urban deliberative democracy is strongly correlated with increased political knowledge, high levels of minority political empowerment, and low levels of racial conflict. Furthermore, deliberative democracy is significantly correlated with greater concern toward policy issues prioritized by the school districts. These findings suggest the importance of promoting deliberative practices in urban, multiracial/multiethnic environments.

The diversity of circumstances and developmental outcomes among Asian American children and youth poses a challenge for scholars interested in Asian American child development. This article addresses the challenge by offering an integrated conceptual framework based on three broad questions: (a) What are theory‐predicated specifications of contexts that are pertinent for the development of Asian American children? (b) What are the domains of development and socialization that are particularly relevant? (c) How can culture as meaning‐making processes be integrated in conceptualizations of development? The heuristic value of the conceptual model is illustrated by research on Asian American children and youth that examines the interconnected nature of specific features of context, pertinent aspects of development, and interpretive processes.

Much of the research on human trafficking focuses on the prosecution of traffickers and protection of survivors after the crime has occurred. Less is known about the social disparities that make someone vulnerable to trafficking. This project examines human trafficking from a preventive focus, using data from a case study of service providers working with at-risk populations in the Kansas City, MO-KS area. The research team conducted 42 in-depth interviews with service providers working in the medical, educational, legal, and social services sectors from 2013 to 2016. Participants identified risk factors that could make someone vulnerable to labor or sexual exploitation. These factors clustered into four key areas: economic insecurity, housing insecurity, education, and migration. The research findings also suggest that human trafficking may be driven by an accumulation of risk factors that move vulnerable persons closer to labor exploitation and sex trafficking, fitting with a chain-of-risk model. We propose a model that reconceives of trafficking as a continuum that includes a range of vulnerabilities, violence, and traumas. In order to address human trafficking, policy makers and advocates need to focus on upstream prevention factors to address vulnerabilities that can lead to sex and labor exploitation.