Social-emotional learning (SEL) is gaining increasing attention in education policy and practice due to evidence that related constructs are strongly associated with long-term academic achievement and attainment. However, the work of educators to support SEL is hampered by a lack of available,...

This report examines the short-term effects of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) on students' non-cognitive skills and civic values. While a growing number of studies have evaluated K-12 school voucher programs along academic dimensions, few have focused on the development of non-cognitive...

Character traits and noncognitive skills are important for human capital development and long-run life outcomes. Research in economics and psychology now shows this clearly. But research into the exact determinants of noncognitive skills have been slowed by a common data limitation: most...

While charter schools differ widely in philosophy and pedagogical views, the United States’s most famous urban charter schools typically use the No Excuses approach. Enrolling mainly poor and minority students, these schools feature high academic standards, strict disciplinary codes, extended...

The goal of this paper is to analyze the role that non-cognitive skills and, in particular, regional differences in those skills, play on the observed differences in 15-year-old student's academic performance, across Spanish regions, on PISA 2009. Previous research has shown the relevance of...

Policy debates in education are often framed by using international test scores, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The obvious presumption is that observed differences in test scores within and across countries reflect differences in cognitive skills and general...

Self-reports are an indispensable source of information in education research but might be affected by reference group bias if the frame of reference (i.e. implicit standards), used to answer the questions, differs across students. The anchoring vignettes method was introduced, in other areas of...

Despite widespread interest and value in introducing and better-preparing students to enter the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, a gender gap persists as women are underrepresented among STEM jobs and degree completion. Although some work has evaluated whether...

Unit nonresponse or attrition in panel data sets is often a source of nonrandom measurement error. Why certain individuals attrite from longitudinal studies and how to minimize this phenomenon have been examined by researchers. However, this research has typically focused on data sets collected...

Although research has been unable to find strong links between observable teacher characteristics and a teacher's ability to improve student achievement, it has generally not considered the role that teacher non-cognitive skills play in affecting student outcomes. In this article, we validate...