In the wake of COVID-19, university students have experienced fundamental changes of their learning and their lives as a whole. The present research identifies psychological characteristics associated with students' well-being in this situation. We investigated relations of basic psychological need satisfaction (experienced competence, autonomy, and relatedness) with positive emotion and intrinsic learning motivation, considering self-regulated learning as a moderator. Self-reports were collected from 6,071 students in Austria (Study 1) and 1,653 students in Finland (Study 2). Structural equation modeling revealed competence as the strongest predictor for positive emotion. Intrinsic learning motivation was predicted by competence and autonomy in both countries and by relatedness in Finland. Moderation effects of self-regulated learning were inconsistent, but main effects on intrinsic learning motivation were identified. Surprisingly, relatedness exerted only a minor effect on positive emotion. The results inform strategies to promote students' well-being through distance learning, mitigating the negative effects of the situation.

The U.S. Department of Education made recent technical changes reducing eligibility for the Rural and Low-Income School Program. Given smaller budgets and lower economies of scale, rural districts may be less able to absorb short-term funding cuts and experience stronger negative achievement effects. Kansas implemented a state-level finance change (block grant funding) after 2015, which froze district revenue regardless of enrollment and reduced funding in districts where enrollment increased. Difference-in-differences models compare achievement before and after block grant implementation to estimate effects of funding cuts separately in rural and non-rural districts. Between-state and within-state comparisons offer complementary identification strategies in which the strengths of one approach help address limitations of the other. Revenue/spending reductions are similar by geography, but represent a larger fraction of rural district budgets. Results indicate that revenue reductions have larger implications for achievement in rural areas, where they represent a larger proportion of the total budget.

We examined the effects of a teacher coaching program on discipline referrals using records from 7,794 secondary U.S. classrooms. Some classroom teachers took part in a trial: They were randomized to receive intensive coaching in a focal classroom or to form a business-as-usual control group. The remaining teachers taught in the same schools. Previous research suggested that the coaching program was associated with increasing equity in discipline referrals in focal coached classrooms (Gregory et al., 2016). The current study addressed the generalizability of effects from teachers' focal coached classrooms to diverse classrooms in their course load. Results suggested that the coaching program had no generalized effects on reducing referrals with African American students or racial referral gaps in classrooms with coached teachers, relative to the control teachers and the other teachers in the schools. We offer implications for coaching programs and directions for equity-oriented efforts to reduce racial discipline gaps.

Students from higher-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds show a persistent advantage in academic outcomes over lower-SES students. It is possible that students' beliefs about academic ability, or mindsets, play some role in contributing to these disparities. Data from a recent nationally representative sample of ninth-grade students in U.S. public schools provided evidence that higher SES was associated with fewer fixed beliefs about academic ability (a group difference of .22 standard deviations). Also, there was a negative association between a fixed mindset and grades that was similar regardless of a student's SES. Finally, student mindsets were a significant but small factor in explaining the existing relationship between SES and achievement. Altogether, mindsets appear to be associated with socioeconomic circumstances and academic achievement; however, the vast majority of the existing socioeconomic achievement gap in the U.S. is likely driven by the root causes of inequality.

The Stanford Educational Data Archive (SEDA) is the first data set to allow comparisons of district academic achievement and growth from Grades 3 to 8 across the United States, shining a light on the distribution of educational opportunities. This study describes a convergent validity analysis of the SEDA growth estimates in mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA) by comparing the SEDA estimates against estimates derived from NWEA's MAP Growth assessments. We find strong precision-adjusted correlations between growth estimates from SEDA and MAP Growth in math (.90) and ELA (.82). We also find that the discrepancy between the growth estimates in ELA is slightly more pronounced in high socioeconomic districts. Our analyses indicate a high degree of congruence between the SEDA estimates and estimates derived from the vertically scaled MAP Growth assessment. However, small systematic discrepancies imply that the SEDA growth estimates are less likely to generalize to estimates obtained through MAP Growth in some states.

Since the conception of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975 there has been substantial progress regarding the education of learners with disabilities. Nevertheless, significant challenges remain for addressing the diverse needs of these learners and improving in- and out-of-school outcomes. This special issue focuses on an approach that holds promise for the delivery of interventions that are aligned to learners' social, emotional, behavioral, and learning needs - multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS). The four articles that comprise the special issue highlight the need for actionable information for schools implementing MTSS, early intervention for children with or at risk for disabilities, and an enhanced focus on intensive interventions. This introduction to the special issue provides information on the meeting that motivated the special issue, a summary of each of the four articles, and paths forward for early and sustained intervention for learners with or at risk for disabilities.

Socioeconomic achievement gaps have long been a central focus of educational research. However, not much is known about how (and why) between-district gaps vary among states, even though states are a primary organizational level in the decentralized education system in the United States. Using data from the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), this study describes state-level socioeconomic achievement gradients and the growth of these gradients from Grades 3 to 8. We also examine state-level correlates of the gradients and their growth, including school system funding equity, preschool enrollment patterns, the distribution of teachers, income inequality, and segregation. We find that socioeconomic gradients and their growth rates vary considerably among states, and that between-district income segregation is positively associated with the socioeconomic achievement gradient.

Many community college students express a desire to transfer to a 4-year institution, but few achieve that goal. In this article, we examine what conditions lead to successful student transfer and which serve as barriers. Drawing on data from a longitudinal qualitative study of 61 transfer-intending students in Texas and using qualitative comparative analysis, we investigate the student-level conditions and experiences that contribute to successful or unsuccessful transfer to a 4-year institution. We find that there is no single condition that can predict success. Instead, we describe how factors such as social capital, students' family background, and advising supports interact with one another to determine student success or failure in the transfer process. We identify specific pathways to transfer, with implications for policies and programs that can help bolster students in the face of potential barriers. We provide suggestions for policy, practice, and future research.

This analysis examines the process of one research-practice partnership (RPP) engaged in the activity of decomposing elementary principal practice in the context of an instructional improvement initiative in mathematics. Decomposing, or breaking apart, complex practice has been used primarily by researchers to inform the design of pre-service teacher education. We argue that decomposition is a rich activity for researchers and practitioners to collaboratively engage in to support improvement efforts where practitioners are expected to transform their day-to-day practice. We examine what can be learned from the process by which one RPP engaged in decomposing practice that might be useful for other RPPs. Our retrospective, qualitative analysis supports understanding of how RPPs might engage in decomposition and the role decomposition might play in supporting RPPs to foster educational transformation in local contexts.

Although decades of research highlight the impact of schooling on earnings, less evidence exists regarding other employment outcomes. Nonwage labor market returns to education are important in the United States, where health insurance and retirement income are typically tied to employment. Using longitudinal, nationally representative data, we examine the role of educational attainment in predicting nonwage employment outcomes and control for a host of individual and institutional measures. Even after controlling for individual and institutional characteristics, results indicate that educational attainment predicts employment and markers of "good" jobs, like access to employer-provided health and dental insurances, retirement plans, and paid leave. Furthermore, by delineating between various subbaccalaureate levels of college attainment, our results illustrate the complex variation in returns to college for those who did not complete a 4-year degree.

Utilizing a nationally representative sample of middle school students, this article focuses on whether students who report experiencing more inquiry-based instruction in science and mathematics classrooms have more positive attitudes toward these subjects. Results of multilevel, multivariate regression analyses revealed that, net of the inclusion of control variables for student, teacher, and school characteristics, a higher frequency of inquiry-based instruction is significantly associated with greater interest, perceptions of utility, and self-efficacy for science and mathematics. Furthermore, although there is some evidence indicating that compared with female students, male students' perceptions of science utility are higher in relation to more inquiry-based instruction, overall, the weight of evidence clearly leans toward the conclusion that the attitudes of students from different gender and racial/ethnic backgrounds are similarly associated with greater exposure to inquiry-based instruction in both their science and mathematics classrooms.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our teacher preparation program shifted to an online setting, disrupting a key feature of practice-based teacher preparation: preservice science teachers' (PSTs) approximation of rigorous and responsive instruction during extended pedagogical rehearsals, called macroteaching. Given this unplanned shock to their preparation, we examined how PSTs viewed macroteaching and their evolving participation in the teaching rehearsal. Using a situative perspective, we collected multiple forms of data. We found that although PSTs wanted to enact rigorous and responsive instruction, their participation was deeply affected by the sudden shift to an online setting. Our analysis of video-recorded lessons confirmed PSTs' observations that their instruction became less rigorous and responsive over time. We conclude with questions about teacher preparation during the pandemic.

The current study investigated the effectiveness of three distinct educational technologies-two game-based applications (From Here to There and DragonBox 12+) and two modes of online problem sets in ASSISTments (an Immediate Feedback condition and an Active Control condition with no immediate feedback) on Grade 7 students' algebraic knowledge. More than 3,600 Grade 7 students across nine in-person and one virtual schools within the same district were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. Students received nine 30-minute intervention sessions from September 2020 to March 2021. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses of the final analytic sample (N = 1,850) showed significantly higher posttest scores for students who used From Here to There and DragonBox 12+ compared to the Active Control condition. No significant difference was found for the Immediate Feedback condition. The findings have implications for understanding how game-based applications can affect algebraic understanding, even within pandemic pressures on learning.

This study integrates an intersectional framework with data on 15,000 U.S. ninth graders from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 to investigate differences in ninth-grade math course placement at the intersection of adolescents' learning disability status, race, and socioeconomic status (SES). Descriptive results support an increased liability perspective, with the negative relationship between a learning disability and math course placement larger for adolescents more privileged in terms of their race and/or SES. Adjusted results suggest that the lower math course placements of youth with learning disabilities are due to cumulative disadvantage rather than disability-related inequities in the transition to high school for youth of diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition to demonstrating the importance of intersectional perspectives, this study provides a roadmap for future studies by introducing the new perspective of increased liability to be used in conjunction with the widely employed perspective of multiple marginalization.

Head Start and state prekindergarten (pre-K) programs can boost the school readiness of low-income children through the use of effective preschool curricula. Encouraging results from some studies suggest that children who receive targeted or content-specific curricular supplements (e.g., literacy or math) during preschool show moderate to large improvements in that targeted content domain, but recent research also suggests differences in children's school readiness among different preschool program settings. We examine whether children in Head Start or public pre-K classrooms differentially benefit from the use of randomly assigned classroom curricula targeting specific academic domains. Our results indicate that children in both Head Start and public pre-K classrooms benefit from targeted, content-specific curricula. Future research is needed to examine the specific mechanisms and classroom processes through which curricula help improve children's outcomes.

Many research agencies are now requiring that data collected as part of funded projects be shared. However, the practice of data sharing in education sciences has lagged these funder requirements. We assert that this is likely because researchers' generally have not been made aware of these requirements and the benefits of data sharing. Furthermore, data sharing is usually not a part of formal training, so many researchers may be unaware how to properly share their data. Finally, the research culture in education science is often filled with concerns regarding the sharing of data. In this article, we address each of these areas, discussing the wide range of benefits of data sharing, the many ways data can be shared, provide a step by step guide to start sharing data, and responses to common concerns.

Early care and education (ECE) experiences shape children's developmental trajectories, particularly for children who have or may have disabilities. However, caregivers of children with disabilities have faced considerable challenges finding care for their children, which have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using survey data from nearly 3,000 caregivers of preschool-age children in Virginia collected in December 2020 and January 2021, we find that caregivers of children with disabilities were less likely to find ECE programs that met their needs, more likely to experience high levels of stress, and more likely to be concerned about their children's development than were caregivers of children without disabilities. Concerns about child development were particularly pronounced among caregivers of children with disabilities in remote instructional settings. Our findings suggest a disproportionate impact of ECE disruption on caregivers of children with disabilities and the need for targeted supports for these caregivers moving forward.

Research in sociology demonstrates the way social connections shape access to information about job opportunities. In education, we understand less about how social networks impact the job process for marginalized teachers and teachers in nontraditional labor markets. This study examines how teachers in New Orleans and Detroit, cities with high concentrations of charter schools, use their networks to search for jobs, and how their experiences vary by race and gender. We find that in choice-rich environments, there was an extensive reliance on social networks in the hiring process, and teachers had different access to key social networks that can help to land jobs. Hiring decisions and unequal access to job opportunities among teacher candidates, in part due to the reliance on networks, created conditions where teachers who cultivated stronger networks, or with access to the "right" networks, had greater opportunity, with implications for racial and gender equity and diversity.

States and broad-access colleges are rapidly scaling corequisite coursework-a model where students concurrently enroll in college-level and developmental coursework-in response to dismal completion rates in traditional "developmental" sequences. At community colleges, evidence suggests that corequisite reforms can dramatically improve students' completion of required college-level courses, but colleges often implement new programing and sequences with limited information. We analyzed administrative data from Texas community colleges implementing a statewide corequisite mandate. Our results illustrate (a) how colleges structured corequisite courses in response to the statewide mandate and (b) how corequisite coursework characteristics predicted student outcomes. Our results suggest that some corequisite coursework elements-including mixed-ability college-level classes, higher credits for the developmental education (dev-ed) corequisite support course, and using the same instructor across both the college-level and dev-ed course-improve students' probability of passing college-level math, though these course design elements do not appear to predict long-term outcomes like persistence in college.

More than half of community college students fail to meet college-readiness standards in math. Developmental education (dev-ed) aims to help students acquire the knowledge and skills to succeed in college-level math but is plagued with low rates of advancement. We examined the impact of a model that accelerates developmental math coursework so that students can complete dev-ed and college math courses in their programs of study within 1 year. Using data from Texas and a propensity score matching approach, we tested the impact of the model on several college milestones. Results suggest that students in the accelerated model were more likely to persist and accumulate college-level credits during the 1st year than those in traditional dev-ed math. After 3 years, there was a strong positive relationship between participation in the accelerated model and important college milestones, like college math course completion and total accumulated college-level credits.

We investigated how the transition to remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic affected students' engagement, self-appraisals, and learning in advanced placement (AP) Statistics courses. Participants included 681 (M=16.7 years, SD=.90; %female=55.4) students enrolled in the course during 2017-2018 (N=266), 2018-2019 (N=200), and the pandemic-affected 2019-2020 (N=215) school years. Students enrolled during the pandemic-affected year reported a greater improvement in affective engagement but a decrease in cognitive engagement in the spring semester relative to a previous year. Females enrolled in the pandemic-affected year experienced a greater negative change in affective and behavioral engagement. Students enrolled during the pandemic-affected year reported a greater decrease in their anticipated AP exam scores and received lower scores on a practice exam aligned with the AP exam compared to a prior year. Although students were resilient in some respects, their self-appraisal and learning appear to have been negatively affected by pandemic circumstances.