Recent AERA Research
 
Highlighted Articles from AERA Journals
Print
  Should Students Assessed as Needing Remedial Mathematics Take College-Level Quantitative Courses Instead? A Randomized Controlled Trial
In this study, the authors investigate how policies allowing students to take college-level instead of remedial quantitative courses can increase student success.
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 
   
  Evaluating Teacher Preparation Using Graduates' Observational Ratings
In this study, the authors investigate the potential for using observational ratings of program completers to evaluate teacher education programs.
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 
   
  Inequalities in Parental Spending on Young Children: 1972-2010
In this study, the author found that spending on child care and learning enrichment goods for children younger than 6 has grown significantly among the wealthiest U.S. households since the 1970s, while it has stagnated for all other income groups.
Read more from AERA Open 
   
  A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Interventions Aimed to Prevent or Reduce Violence in Teen Dating Relationships
In this study, the authors provide a quantitative synthesis of empirical evaluations of school-based programs implemented in middle and high schools that sought to prevent or reduce incidents of dating violence.
Read more from Review of Education Research 
   
  Science Achievement Gaps Begin Very Early, Persist, and Are Largely Explained by Modifiable Factors
In this study, the authors examined the age of onset, over-time dynamics, and mechanisms underlying science achievement gaps in U.S. elementary and middle schools.
Read more from Educational Researcher
   
  Public Pre-K and Test-Taking for the NYC Gifted and Talented Programs: Forging a Path to Equity
In this study, the authors used proprietary data made available to them by the NYC Department of Education, and showed that substantial disparities exist in the rates of gifted-and-talented admission test taking, the first step in the process of accessing these more challenging educational opportunities.
Read more from Educational Researcher 

 
Discretion and Disproportionality: Explaining the Underrepresentation of High-Achieving Students of Color in Gifted Programs
In this study, the authors found that when black students are taught by a black classroom teacher, the racial gap in gifted assignment largely disappears.
Read more from AERA Open
   

Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?
In a new study published in AERA Open, the authors compared kindergarten and first grade classrooms between 1998 and 2010. They found that over a 12-year period, kindergarten classes have become increasingly like first grade.
Read more from AERA Open
   

Does College Teach Critical Thinking? A Meta-Analysis
In this study, the authors analyzed 71 research reports published over the past 48 years, to determine how successful four-year colleges are at teaching students critical thinking.
Read more from Review of Educational Research.
   

The Role of Schooling in Perpetuating Educational Inequality: An International Perspective
In this paper, student-level indicators of opportunity to learn (OTL) included in the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment are used to explore the joint relationship of OTL and socioeconomic status (SES) to student mathematics literacy.
Read more from Educational Researcher.
   

Study Finds Causal Connection between Genotypes Related to Educational Attainment and Years of Education Achieved
A first-of-its-kind, nationally representative study of siblings finds that, within families, an adolescent with a higher “polygenic score”—which summarizes previously identified genome-wide associations for educational attainment—than her or his sibling tended to go on to complete more years of schooling. 
Read more from AERA Open.
   

Minorities Are Disproportionately Underrepresented in Special Education: Longitudinal Evidence Across Five Disability Conditions
Researchers investigated whether minority children attending U.S. elementary and middle schools are disproportionately represented in special education.
Read more from Educational Researcher.
   

Measurement Matters: Assessing Personal Qualities Other Than Cognitive Ability for Educational Purposes
This article systematically reviews what is known empirically about the association between executive function and student achievement in both reading and math and critically assesses the evidence for a causal association between the two. 
Read more from Educational Researcher
   


The Potential for School-Based Interventions That Target Executive Function to Improve Academic Achievement: A Review
Despite growing enthusiasm about the potential of school-based executive function interventions to significantly increase student achievement, a federally funded meta-analysis finds no conclusive evidence that developing students’ executive function skills leads to better academic performance. 
Read more from Review of Educational Research
   
  Impact of North Carolina’s Early Childhood Initiatives on Special Education Placements in Third Grade
This study examines the community-wide effects of investments in two early childhood initiatives in North Carolina (Smart Start and More at Four) on the likelihood of a student being placed into special education. 
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
   
Evaluating the Impacts of "New" Performance Funding in Higher Education
In 2007, Washington adopted the Student Achievement Initiative, a statewide performance accountability system designed to improve retention rates and degree productivity among community colleges. 
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
   

Patterns and Trends in Grade Retention Rates in the United States, 1995–2010
Although grade retention may be consequential for a number of important educational and socioeconomic outcomes, we know surprisingly little about the actual rate at which students are made to repeat grades.
Read more from Educational Researcher

 

Labor Market Returns to Sub-Baccalaureate Credentials: How Much Does a Community College Degree or Certificate Pay?
Short-term certificate programs at community colleges offer limited labor-market returns, on average, in most fields of study. 
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
   

The findings expose the way in which ELLs’ chances for rigorous academic preparation are systematically reduced and point to the importance of providing ELLs with high-level academic curriculum while also supplying linguistic scaffolding that makes such learning possible.
 ‘‘I’m Not Going to Be, Like, for the AP’’: English Language Learners’ Limited Access to Advanced College-Preparatory Courses in High School
Findings expose the way in which ELLs’ chances for rigorous academic preparation are systematically reduced and point to the importance of providing ELLs with high-level academic curriculum while also supplying linguistic scaffolding that makes such learning possible.
Read more from American Educational Research Journal
   
Latino EL students enrolled in two-language programs are reclassified at a slower pace in elementary school but have higher overall reclassification, English proficiency, and academic threshold passage by the end of high school.
 Reclassification Patterns Among Latino English Learner Students in Bilingual, Dual Immersion, and English Immersion Classrooms
Latino EL students enrolled in two-language programs are reclassified at a slower pace in elementary school but have higher overall reclassification, English proficiency, and academic threshold passage by the end of high school. 
Read more from American Educational Research Journal
   

Facts Are More Important Than Novelty: Replication in the Education Sciences
Although replicating important findings is essential for helping education research improve its usefulness to policymakers and practitioners, less than one percent of the articles published in the top education research journals are replication studies.
Read more from Educational Researcher
   

College Selectivity and Degree Completion
Using multi-level models and propensity score matching methods to reduce selection bias, selectivity, measured by a college’s average SAT score, was found not to have an independent effect on graduation.
Read more from American Educational Research Journal
   
course graduation requirements
 Intended and Unintended Effects of State-Mandated High School Science and Mathematics Course Graduation Requirements on Educational Attainment
Raising state-mandated math and science course graduation requirements may increase high school dropout rates without a meaningful effect on college enrollment or degree attainment.
Read more from Educational Researcher
   
Which Instructional Practices Most Help First-Grade Students With and Without Mathematics Difficulties?
 Which Instructional Practices Most Help First-Grade Students With and Without Mathematics Difficulties?
First-grade teachers in the United States may need to change their instructional practices if they are to raise the mathematics achievement of students with mathematics difficulties.
Read more in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
   

The Test-Optional Movement at America’s Selective Liberal Arts Colleges: A Boon for Equity or Something Else?
The test-optional movement in the United States emerged largely in response to criticism of standardized admissions tests as inadequate and potentially biased measures of postsecondary promise.
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
   

Estimating the Effects of No Child Left Behind on Teachers and Their Work Environment
The conventional wisdom that No Child Left Behind has eroded teacher job satisfaction and commitment is off the mark, according to new research. 
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
   

Inaccurate Estimation of Disparities Due to Mischievous Responders: Several Suggestions to Assess Conclusions
New data analysis procedures may help minimize the impact of "mischievous responders," according to research published in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of AERA.
Read more from Educational Researcher
   

Instructional Alignment as a Measure of Teaching Quality
Researchers found weak to nonexistent relationships between state-administered value-added model measures of teacher performance and the content or quality of teachers’ instruction.
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
   
  The Community College Route to the Bachelor’s Degree
Students who begin their postsecondary education at a community college and successfully transfer to a four-year college have BA graduation rates equal to similar students who begin at four-year colleges, according to this article.
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
   
  Promoting Human Capital Development: A Typology of International Scholarship Programs in Higher Education
This article sheds light on the availability and characteristics of international scholarship programs that are sponsored by national and federal governments worldwide and that are intended to promote student mobility.
Read more from Educational Researcher
   
Efficacy of the Responsive Classroom Approach: Results From a 3-Year, Longitudinal Randomized Controlled Trial
Classroom programs designed to improve elementary school students’ social and emotional skills can also increase reading and math achievement, even if academic improvement is not a direct goal of the skills building.
Read more from American Educational Research Journal
   
New Evidence on Teacher Labor Supply
Recent evidence on the large variance in teacher effectiveness has spurred interest in teacher labor markets. 
Read more from American Educational Research Journal
   
Conceptual and Methodological Problems in Research on College Undermatch
This article identifies three problematic assumptions in research on undermatching, a popular explanation for the phenomenon of students in the lowest income quartile constituting less than 4% of enrollment at the nation's most selective colleges.
Read more from Educational Researcher
   
  True for Your School? How Changing Reputations Alter Demand for Selective U.S. Colleges
Rankings published annually by the Princeton Review and U.S. News and World Report and their effects on the number of applications colleges receive are examined.
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
   

Learning to Think Critically: A Visual Art Experiment
This article examines whether exposure to the arts has an effect on the ability of students to engage in critical thinking.
Read more from Educational Researcher
   

Diversity ≠ Inclusion: Promoting Integration in Higher Education
Marta Tienda argues that enrollment of a diverse student body is but a pragmatic first step toward the broader social goal of inclusion and ask whether motives for campus diversification are aligned with pedagogic goals.
Read more from Educational Researcher
   
  Professional Development Research: Consensus, Crossroads, and Challenges
Commentaries regarding appropriate methods for researching professional development have been a frequent topic in recent issues of Educational Researcher as well as other venues.
Read more from Educational Researcher
   

Organized Interests and the Common Core
Among the notable aspects of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is the diverse array of interest groups supporting them.
Read more from Educational Researcher
   
  The Past and Likely Future of an Educational Form: A Textbook Case
At a time when it is seen as increasingly “obsolete,” this article analyzes the textbook as an evolving pedagogical form,as a changing medium comprised of smaller media components. 
Read more from Educational Researcher
   

State Bans on Affirmative Action Have Spillover Effect on Adjacent States
In the first empirically driven snapshot of affirmative action at the national level, researchers discover that state bans on affirmative action in college admission have a spillover effect on neighboring states without highly selective colleges.
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
   
The Effects of Student Coaching - An Evaluation of a Randomized Experiment in Student Advising
"College graduation rates often lag behind college attendance rates. One theory as to why students do not complete college is that they lack key information about how to be successful or fail to act on the information that they have."
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
Dramatic, Unexpected Shift in Faculty Retirement Behavior
"Sixty percent of faculty no longer subject to mandatory retirement are expected to remain employed beyond age 70 and 15 percent will retire at age 80 or over," far higher rates than projected by the National Research Council two decades ago.
Read more from Educational Researcher
   


Summer Reading Programs Make a Difference, Especially for Low-Income Students
"Children who participated in [summer reading programs at school or at home] enjoyed significant improvement on multiple reading outcomes," with "significantly larger benefits for children from low-income backgrounds."
Read more from Review of Educational Research
   
School-based "College Coaches" Show Promise at Closing Enrollment Gaps for Underserved Students
Students at coach schools were significantly more likely to attend less selective 4-year colleges [than 2-year colleges], which have much higher graduation rates than 2-year colleges, and they were more likely to enroll in college."
Read more from Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 
   

Grade Inflation: Fact or Fiction?
"Contrary to much of the existing literature, we find virtually no support for the existence of grade inflation in secondary or postsecondary education."
Read more from Educational Researcher













 
Designed by Weber-Shandwick   Powered by eNOAH