Students in some countries do far better on international achievement tests than students in other countries. Is this all due to differences in what students bring with them to school - socio-economic background, cultural factors, and the like? Or do school systems make a difference? This essay...

Students in some countries do far better on international achievement tests than students in other countries. Is this all due to differences in what students bring with them to school – socio-economic background, cultural factors, and the like? Or do school systems make a difference? This...

Recent evidence suggests a positive effect of the quantity of instruction on student achievement. In this paper, I focus on the interaction between the quantity and the quality of instruction. Using international TIMSS data, I exploit within-student between-subject variation. I find that on...

We explore the extent to which starting primary school earlier by up to one year can help shield children from the detrimental, long-term developmental consequences of having an ill or disabled sibling. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, we employ a Regression...

While there is now much evidence in the literature that assignment to ethnically-congruent teachers results in better student outcomes like achievement and teachers' evaluations of their behavior for Black and White students, findings appear to be noticeably mixed for Hispanic students. This...