Given that previous findings on the social distribution of the effects of small classes have been mixed and inconclusive, in the present study I attempted to shed light on the mechanism through which small classes affect the achievement of low- and high-achieving students. I used data from a...

Multilevel models are widely used in education and social science research. However, the effects of omitting levels of the hierarchy on the variance decomposition and the clustering effects have not been well documented. This paper discusses how omitting one level in three-level models affects...

Previous findings from experimental and non-experimental studies have demonstrated that teachers differ in their effectiveness. In addition, evidence from non-experimental studies has indicated that teacher effects can last up to five years. This study used high-quality data from a four-year...

The impact of schools on student achievement has been of great interest for the last four decades. This study examines trends of school effects on student achievement employing three national probability samples of high school seniors: NLS:72, HSB:82, and NELS:92. Hierarchical linear models are...

Much of the research that has followed welfare reform and new policies such as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has focused on identifying the variations in how different states have put the new policy into practice. Less is known however, about how this new policy affects the...

This study examines gender differences in the earnings of young adults in the 1980s and 1990s. We determine changes in the gender gap over time in the middle, the tails, and the variability of the earnings distribution. We employ data from two longitudinal, nationally probability samples of high...

This study examines high school effects on the labor market success of young adults, above and beyond individual and family characteristics. We employ data from two longitudinal, nationally probability samples: the National Longitudinal Study and the High School and Beyond study and the 5th and...

In experimental designs with nested structures entire groups (such as schools) are often assigned to treatment conditions. Key aspects of the design in these cluster randomized experiments include knowledge of the intraclass correlation structure and the sample sizes necessary to achieve...

Meta-analytic methods have been widely applied to education, medicine, and the social sciences. Much of meta-analytic data are hierarchically structured since effect size estimates are nested within studies, and in turn studies can be nested within level-3 units such as laboratories or...

We examined the persistence of teacher effects from grade to grade on lower-performing students using high-quality experimental data from Project STAR, where students and teachers were assigned randomly to classrooms of different sizes. The data included information about mathematics and reading...