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Policymakers and educational leaders across state and federal agencies have invested considerable effort in identifying how schools can both mitigate and exacerbate student absenteeism. Despite extensive research into school-level characteristics and programs, there remains a notable gap in understanding the impact of classroom-level factors on absenteeism. This study investigates how classmates' absences impact student absenteeism in four Texas school districts, analyzing both in-person and virtual contexts. Using a novel approach that accounts for day-to-day attendance variation, findings indicate that in-person absenteeism among peers significantly increases a student's absenteeism, with effects lasting up to three days, regardless of achievement levels. However, virtual absenteeism showed no similar impact, highlighting distinct absenteeism dynamics in virtual environments. Amid COVID-19 disruptions, this underscores the need for interventions addressing absenteeism across varied learning settings, offering insights for policymakers and educators in navigating the challenges of both physical and virtual classroom dynamics.

Student-teacher relationships are at the core of student experiences in schools and, arguably, fundamental to influencing student outcomes. Using a statewide, student-level school climate survey from Massachusetts, we investigate teachers' contributions to school climate, which we refer to as climate value added (VA), and how it varies by student race/ethnicity. We first show that climate VA contributes to student learning: Teachers whose students report positive feelings about climate also contribute more to student test scores and to an aggregate of nontest student outcomes (student absences, suspensions, and grade progression). And teachers identified by students of color as contributing to better school climate have outsize effects on learning gains for these students. Differences in teachers' climate effects across racial/ethnic groups are largest on topics aligned with cultural competency, school participation, and comfort with faculty. Lastly, we find that Black students assigned to Black teachers report better school climate than Black students assigned to other teachers.

A growing quantitative literature finds evidence that student teaching placements predict later outcomes of teacher candidates and their students, but there is little large-scale quantitative evidence about the mechanisms for these estimated relationships. We use data from a survey of STEM teachers in Washington State to better understand how their perceptions of preparation are related to student teaching placements and current classroom environment. We find evidence that the composition of students in student teaching classrooms are predictive of STEM teachers' perceptions of their preparation. For example, STEM teachers who student taught in classrooms with more English Language Learners and economically disadvantaged students reported feeling prepared to teach these specific student populations. Likewise, STEM teachers who student taught in high-poverty classrooms tended to report feeling better prepared to manage their current classroom, particularly if they were currently teaching in a high-poverty classroom.

Individual teachers, administrators, and parents made tremendous efforts to continue educating the Commonwealth's children between March and June of this year. But no amount of dedicated individual effort could have overcome fundamental challenges: weak guidance to districts from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) against a backdrop of deficient knowledge and sophistication statewide with regard to virtual learning. Digital education has been empirically proven to be most successful when schools prepare and follow best distance learning practices. However, the Commonwealth lacks even the minimum technological infrastructure for virtual learning, as exemplified by districts scrambling to obtain electronic devices and internet connections during the school closure. It is encouraging that Governor Baker and the DESE have described a fall 2020 return to brick-and-mortar schooling--with appropriate health measures to maximize safety--as a significant priority. The present challenge is how to implement this much-needed return to school, optimally balancing the importance of in-person schooling with the countervailing importance of protecting against the virus. The following paper contributes important insights, based upon careful review of other countries that have already successfully reopened their schools. [Foreword written by David S. Clancy and Dr. John G. Flores.]

This report considers the science of adult literacy acquisition, with the goal of identifying principles that may improve the effectiveness of adult literacy programs. We define literacy as a continuum, from emerging literacy, through improving literacy, to fluent literacy and we outline the factors that influence how far along that continuum an adult learner is likely to proceed. Four nested levels are identified at which obstacles to literacy progress operate, but to which adult learners may also bring strengths. We consider the evidence base for each of these levels: (1) "The Brain," where the basic neuroscience of how learning changes over the lifespan gives us clues about processes that restrict adult learning, and hints about how teaching can be optimized for the adult brain; (2) "The Person," where the roles of motivation, resilience and engagement can have a profound impact on outcomes; (3) "The Learning Environment," where teaching approach, course structure, fellow learners and technology can all affect progress; and (4) "The Cultural Context," where integrating expectations and local needs into literacy programs can allow learners to access materials in the most acceptable and appropriate ways. Principles derived from this evidence base are integrated and contextualized in an analysis of six case studies from the field. We indicate areas where further research is required (e.g., determining the degree of practice adults require to achieve fluency); and identify metrics that future literacy programs should collect in order to build an evidence base of properties that improve effectiveness. The evidence summarized in this report suggests that there is scope to improve outcomes in adult literacy programs around the world, and to realize more of the social and economic benefits that such gains provide. [This paper was commissioned for the World Bank activity on Innovations in Adult Literacy.]

Using detailed administrative data for public schools, we document racial and ethnic segregation at the classroom level in North Carolina, a state that has experienced a sharp increase in Hispanic enrollment. We decompose classroom-level segregation in counties into within-school and between-school components. We find that the within-school component accounted for a sizable share of total segregation in middle schools and high schools. Recognizing its importance could temper the praise for school assignment policies that reduce racial disparities between schools but allow large disparities within them. More generally, we observe between the two components a complementary relationship, with one component tending to be large when the other one is small. Comparing the degree of segregation for the state's two largest racial/ethnic minority groups, we find that White/Hispanic segregation was more severe than White/Black segregation, particularly within schools. Analyzed as separate administrative units, schools with large shares of Black students tended to have more White/Black segregation across classrooms than schools with smaller shares. Finally, we examine enrollment patterns by course and show that school segregation brings with it differences by race and ethnicity in the courses that students take, with White students more likely to be enrolled in advanced classes.

What makes diversity unifying in some settings but divisive in others? We examine how the mixing of ethnic groups in German schools affects intergroup cooperation and trust. We leverage the quasi-random assignment of students to classrooms within schools to obtain variation in the type of diversity that prevails in a peer group. We combine this with a large-scale, incentivized lab-in-field-experiment based on the investment game, allowing us to assess the in-group bias of native German students in their interactions with fellow natives (in-group) versus immigrants (out-group). We find in-group bias peaks in culturally polarized classrooms, where the native and immigrant groups are both large, but have different religious or language backgrounds. In contrast, in classrooms characterized by non-cultural polarization, fractionalization, or a native supermajority, there are significantly lower levels of own-group favoritism. In terms of mechanisms, we find empirical evidence that culturally polarized classrooms foster negative stereotypes about immigrants' trustworthiness and amplify taste-based discrimination, both of which are costly and lead to lower payouts. In contrast, accurate statistical discrimination is ruled out by design in our experiment. These findings suggest that extra efforts are needed to counteract low levels of inclusivity and trust in culturally polarized environments. [Funding for this report was provided by ifo Institute, University of Munich, University of St. Gallen, and University of Hamburg.]

Teachers play a critical role in establishing classroom and school environments that contribute to students' social and emotional development. This paper explores whether we can estimate a classroom-level measure of student growth in SEL by applying value-added models to students' [social-emotional learning] SEL. We analyze data from the 2016 and 2017 administrations of student self-report surveys, which contain responses from roughly 40,000 students in Grade 5 within five of California's CORE Districts. We estimate separate value-added models for each of the four SEL constructs assessed--growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness--and for math and [English language arts] ELA academic growth. We find across-classroom-within-school variance of students' SEL outcomes, even after accounting for school-level variance. The magnitude of classroom-level impacts on students' growth in SEL appears similar to impacts on students' growth in ELA and math, although the growth models of SEL do not perform as well as growth models of academic outcomes. Results suggest that across-classroom-within-school impacts may be larger in magnitude than across-school impacts on students' SEL growth. Finally, we show that there are generally low correlations between classroom-level growth in SEL and classroom-level growth in ELA or math; however, growth mindset stands apart from the other three SEL constructs in that there is a moderately strong relationship. By assessing whether we can develop a sound approach for measuring classroom-level impacts on students' SEL, we aim to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about appropriate and innovative uses of data on students' non-cognitive and social-emotional learning. [For the policy brief, "Can We Measure Classroom Supports for Social-Emotional Learning?," see ED600449.]

Dual language learners make up an increasing share of preschool students, but they often perform worse than monolingual students on assessments measuring school achievement. This study compares Head Start classrooms implementing either the dual language model or the English with home language support model. The author examines how the models affect gains in English or Spanish oral proficiency over a school year and how classroom organization and quality affect potential proficiency gains. Students in dual language classrooms showed significantly greater average gains from pretest to posttest in English oral proficiency and Spanish oral proficiency than did students in classrooms using the English with home language support model. The difference was even more pronounced among classrooms with low organization. Findings highlight the need for professional development on language model use to ensure consistency in delivery. [This work was funded through the Young Scholars Award.]

This paper studies how the effectiveness of teachers varies by classroom composition. We combine random assignment of teachers to classrooms with rich measures of teacher effectiveness based on a popular observational protocol, Framework for Teaching, to overcome key endogeneity concerns related to measurement and matching. We find that complementarities between classroom composition and teaching practice play a significant role in student achievement. We identify two main mechanisms that are driving this result: (1) negative interactions between challenging and/or student-centered practices and heterogeneity in classroom prior achievement, and (2) positive interactions between classroom management skills and average classroom prior achievement. Our findings illustrate the multidimensional nature of teacher effectiveness and have important implications for prescribing teaching practice and evaluating teachers. Simulations show that teacher rankings change substantially simply from within-school classroom reallocations, suggesting the need for caution when using popular teaching evaluation rubrics in high-stakes settings.

High school course grades are a primary source of information about students' academic readiness, yet they are often viewed as inconsistent measures of student achievement-- influenced by idiosyncratic practices across schools and teachers, systematic differences in course content and structure, compositional effects of peers, and student demographics. Prior research has not quantified the extent of this variation relative to the influence of students' academic skills and effort, or examined multiple sources of influence simultaneously. This study employed cross-classified random-effects models with a dataset of 2.1 million grade records from 125,223 students and 11,000 teachers at 118 schools to identify sources of variation in students' grades. Grades varied based on which teacher students had for a given class and the conditions of the class (course subject, classroom peer achievement, time of day, class size and term). There were systematic differences in course grades by race and gender, even among students taking the same classes under the same conditions with the same test scores and attendance in the course. However, students' effort and skills, measured through attendance and test scores, dwarfed other sources of variation. Within- and between-student variation in attendance across classes also explained a substantial portion of variation by teacher, school and course conditions. Rather than finding large unexplained differences in grades based on which school a student attended, or which teacher they had, we found observable factors systematically explained differences in the grades that students received, particularly in students' aggregate grade point averages.

A commonly proposed, but naïve approach to solving the debates over curriculum and pedagogy would be to merely go with what the research says "works," but educational debates are not so easily solved. Educational decisions are at the heart value judgements, and to claim that research can tell us what to do represents an ethical and moral "cop-out" to these crucial decisions. The term "evidence," as well, tends to mean randomized, controlled, experimental studies; there are myriad other forms of evidence that we encounter in schools that gets pushed to the side. Ultimately, this white paper concludes, research can only tell us what did work; the only way to know "what works" is to look at what is working for a given teacher in the context of their own classroom.

Classroom climate is a broad construct, made up of students' feelings about their instructor and peers. Although there is a plethora of research on the effects of classroom climate on student outcomes at the secondary level, there is a relative dearth of such research on the postsecondary level. However, much of the research that does exist shows that students' perceptions of classroom climate at the postsecondary level have a great impact on learning, motivation, satisfaction, and achievement. This paper will thus provide strategies to help instructors promote positive interpersonal relationships in the classroom, which increases student connectedness, thereby improving classroom climate. Instructors should always consider how their behaviors may be interpreted by their students and keep the classroom climate in mind when developing courses and lesson plans. Doing so is likely to increase positive outcomes for students as well as levels of satisfaction for the instructor.

Across campus, laptops and other mobile devices, such as iPads and smartphones, are appearing in greater numbers in the classroom. In a CTools survey of 1,415 U-M students conducted in Winter 2010, over 50% of respondents reported bringing their laptops to class at least once per week (USE Lab, Digital Media Commons, 2010). Many faculty see this trend as an opportunity for more innovative teaching, and they are exploring ways to leverage this technology to increase student engagement during lecture. However, other faculty worry about potential distractions that mobile devices could introduce into their classrooms. This Occasional Paper presents the results of a CRLT research study that examined student perceptions of how laptops affect attentiveness, engagement, and learning, and the authors suggest guidelines for using laptops and other mobile devices effectively in the classroom. This paper discusses how laptops can be an effective tool for promoting student learning if faculty plan carefully for how and when they will ask students to use their laptops, rather than simply allowing students to bring them to class.

How to incorporate mobile students, who enter schools/classrooms after the start of the school year, into educational performance evaluations remains to be a challenge. As mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), all states currently require that a school is accountable only if the student has been enrolled in the school for a full academic year. This paper investigates the school response to this eligibility requirement using regression-discontinuity framework. I find that schools that face accountability pressure behave strategically in an attempt to boost the "assessed" student performance, creating significant achievement gaps between eligible and ineligible mobile students. The findings also suggest that these achievement gaps are primarily driven by the strategic classification of students by failing schools to alter the eligible test-taker pool. I propose an alternative approach to mobile students in educational performance evaluations that eliminates this undesired incentive, which ironically affects students whom accountability systems specifically aspire not to leave behind. Appended are: (1) Full Academic Year Definitions in 50 States and the District of Columbia as of 2009; and (2) Grading Formula in Florida: 2008-2009 School Year. (Contains 9 figures, 13 tables, and 15 footnotes.)

This paper presents the School Citizenship Education Climate Assessment and examines its implications for the social studies. The assessment tool was developed from a variety of research fields and disciplines related to school and classroom climate and educational practices including civic education, educational psychology and service-learning. We begin with a brief examination of several key concepts underlying our assessment including school climate, citizenship education and the social studies. Next we present our theoretical framework consisting of seven characteristics of school climate that we believe are critical to an education for responsible citizenship. Within this section we explore the relationship between these characteristics and the social studies in fostering a positive school climate for citizenship education. A description of the assessment follows with a focus on its development, intended audience and use and application in the field. We conclude with a discussion of future directions for research and implications for practice. [This Working Paper was produced by CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement). For CIRCLE Working Paper 47, see ED494039.]

In this paper we analyze the impact of classroom peers on individual student performance with a unique longitudinal data set covering all Florida public school students in grades 3-10 over a five-year period. Unlike many previous data sets used to study peer effects in education, our data set allow us to identify each member of a given student's classroom peer group in elementary, middle, and high school as well as the classroom teacher responsible for instruction. As a result, we can control for individual student fixed effects simultaneously with individual teacher fixed effects, thereby alleviating biases due to endogenous assignment of both peers and teachers, including some dynamic aspects of such assignments. Our estimation strategy, which focuses on the influence of peers' fixed characteristics--both observed and unobserved--on individual test score gains, also alleviates potential biases due to error in measuring peer quality, simultaneity of peer outcomes, and mean reversion. Under linear-in-means specifications, estimated peer effects are small to non-existent, but we find some sizable and significant peer effects within non-linear models. For example, we find that peer effects depend on an individual student's own ability and on the ability level of the peers under consideration, results that suggest Pareto-improving redistributions of students across classrooms and/or schools. Estimated peer effects tend to be smaller when teacher fixed effects are included than when they are omitted, a result that suggests co-movement of peer and teacher quality effects within a student over time. We also find that peer effects tend to be stronger at the classroom level than at the grade level. (Appended to this document is "Comparison of Estimation Methods Using Simulated Data." Contains 28 footnotes and 10 tables.)

Recent research is revealing a great deal about how changes in educational practices and policies can revamp classrooms and schools to close the achievement gaps and promote excellence in learning for all students. This working paper examines best practices that shift classroom management's emphasis from controlling students' behavior to creating "learning-centered" classrooms that foster their engagement, autonomy, and sense of community by giving them progressively more responsibility, under the teacher's careful guidance. These practices are part of an instruction strategy aimed at helping students achieve high academic, moral, and social goals. The report illustrates the implementation of changes in learning goals, classroom environments, management strategies, and assessment practices through the experiences of "Bill," a science and social studies teacher in an urban middle school, and "Patricia," a teacher in an elementary school on the border between city and suburb. (Contains 4 tables.)

This paper reports findings of a study examining child-, classroom-, and school-level factors that effect academic achievement among public school children in the South. Using ECLS-K data, we compare and contrast the learning environments in high/low minority and high/low poverty schools. A sizeable minority of Southern children attend schools that are race and/or class segregated; on multiple dimensions these schools are less desirable than are schools attended by more privileged children, and children attending these schools have lower levels of academic achievement. Results from 3-level random intercepts models show that a range of child and family factors, as well as classrooms with less experienced teachers and with more low-level readers, and rural school location all contribute to lower reading gains during first grade. We find no "race effects" on achievement, net of other variables. Issues of "selection" are discussed, and implications for social work are explored.

New trends in language teaching have resulted in a move towards research in the language classroom. A brief overview of classroom research reveals three distinct but inter-related research paradigms: classroom-centered research, classroom process research, and qualitative research, respectively.

This working paper describes the development of a child care center in Berlin, Germany, focusing on how the program's pedagogical principles support children's learning, how respect for diversity is integrated in everyday practice, and how program quality and accessibility are defined within a multicultural context. Chapter 1 describes the construction of the child care center from an abandoned parking garage and the response of the community to the renovation. Chapter 2 details efforts to incorporate an intercultural and bilingual approach to meet the child care needs of the primarily-Turkish neighborhood. Chapter 3 presents the pedagogical framework, the contextual child development approach, based upon the premise the children possess individual rights, that they accomplish the steps necessary for their development through their own activities, and that the adult's role is to support children through accountable relationships and to provide a stimulating environment. Chapter 4 describes the planning and furnishing of rooms. Chapter 5 focuses on multicultural education and the center's use of an anti-bias curriculum. Chapter 6 provides examples of some of the curricular themes and describes the use of personal puppets or persona dolls. Chapter 7 describes how program staff work with parents. Chapter 8 highlights new projects, including the development of quality criteria for the contextual approach and the creation of a relaxation room. Appended are guidelines for implementing the contextual child development approach in child care centers. (KB)

Commissioned by the Foundation for Child Development, this report examines the state of universal prekindergarten in the United States and the challenges to its widespread implementation. The report describes socioeconomic and ethnic/racial differences in school readiness and maintains that policymakers need to identify mechanisms in addition to UPK that help trigger productive experiences for preschool children. It is noted that quality in program and staff are often too low in many preschool programs. One of the major challenges for UPK, the report notes, is to provide access for the middle class and near poor children who do not qualify for Head Start and cannot afford unsubsidized nursery schools. Efforts in states such as Georgia and Florida are cited to illustrate the leadership efforts required to expand UPK in a fiscally stressed environment. The report notes that although the diverse settings in which early care and education are currently offered provide the rudiments of a UPK infrastructure, and that there is a precedent in the United States for fashioning an infrastructure from a combination of existing private and public providers, some UPK advocates steadfastly separate issues of UPK from those of child care, fearing that mixing the two will undermine the campaign for UPK. Public opinion in the United States is described as viewing prekindergarten as a downward extension of formal education and child care as a family responsibility. The report argues that it would be beneficial to regard prekindergarten and full-day kindergarten as part of the educational experience from age 3 to age 8, a P-3 continuum. It is asserted that a more comprehensive approach to education, including the use of the summer months, can help students retain the advances they make at each level. The report concludes by reiterating that the movement for universal prekindergarten collides with state and federal deficits, suffers from negative comparisons to Head Start programs in the "Head Start reauthorization wars," and requires bold, creative methods to maintain momentum. (Contains 20 endnotes.) (KB)

This study examined the characteristics and factors in the undergraduate experience that appeared to be most strongly associated with vitality in the classroom. Data were collected from 740 representative freshmen at a large research university by means of a university survey instrument that contained over 150 items in four categories: (1) background information on student age, class year, sex, ethnicity, employment, admissions status, major, financial aid, residence, Scholastic Assessment Test scores, and high school grade point average and class rank; (2) student plans, goals, and reasons for attendance; (3) level of student satisfaction with campus services and facilities, as well as with the institution's academic, administrative, and social climate; and (4) cognitive and noncognitive experiences and outcomes, including classroom experiences, faculty contact, course-taking patterns, graduation plans, loan indebtedness, and self-reported growth. Regression analysis of the data indicated that the most beneficial classroom experiences were reported by students who perceived high levels of faculty concern and interaction with faculty, who were actively engaged in the academic and social structure of the institution, and who observed a campus climate of racial harmony and political tolerance. Two tables summarize the variables used and the multivariate data. (Contains 52 references.) (CH)

This study compared the effects of personal characteristics and teaching practices in the development of professional competencies by undergraduate engineering students. A survey completed by 480 engineering students gathered information concerning students' personal, academic, and demographic characteristics; characteristics of their current engineering course; and their self-evaluation of progress made in various areas as a result of their current course. Results indicated that self-evaluated gains in group, problem-solving, and design skills were more the result of current teaching practices than the outcome of students' precollege characteristics. Results suggest that gains in professional competencies can be fostered in the classroom by frequent interaction with and feedback from the instructor, frequent opportunities to work collaboratively with peers, and by clear instructions and structure provided by the instructor. No significant differences were found between male and female students. An appendix lists engineering program accreditation criteria. (Contains 62 references.) (DB)

This study examines the undergraduate characteristics and factors in the undergraduate experience that appear to correlate with beneficial classroom experiences. The study was conducted at a large research university with an undergraduate population of about 10,000 students. Data were derived from a survey instrument that is part of the university's on-going assessment program, with 150 items of information collected in four categories: (1) background information (age, class year, sex, ethnicity, employment, admissions status, academic major, financial aid, residence), Scholastic Assessment Test scores, and high school grade point averages; (2) student plans, goals, and reasons for attendance; (3) level of student satisfaction with a variety of campus services and facilities, as well as with the institution's academic, administrative, and social environments; and (4) cognitive and noncognitive experiences, such as classroom experiences, faculty contact, course-taking patterns, and self-reported growth. Multivariate data analysis examined surveys of 740 undergraduates who entered the university as freshmen. The study found that the most beneficial classroom experiences were reported by students who perceived high levels of faculty concern and interaction with students, who reported active engagement in the academic and social structure of the institution, and who observed a campus climate of racial harmony and political tolerance. (Contains 52 references.) (CH)