Search results for: School demographics

This article explores the effect that the proportion of children of immigrants in a school has on all students’ expectations and examines the differential effects of school composition on the expectations of children of immigrants as compared with nonimmigrants. This analysis demonstrates that comparative and normative theories of school effects are not accurate for children of immigrants, at least not to the same degree as they are for nonimmigrants.

The authors conduct secondary analyses of national data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study –Kindergarten Cohort to investigate the degree to which the racial and ethnic composition of schools is associated with use of ability grouping practices as early as kindergarten. The authors focus on within-class ability grouping for reading instruction. The authors find that this form of grouping is practiced by a majority of kindergarten teachers and schools, although frequency of use is quite varied, and some teachers and schools use it only sporadically.

Research suggests that substantial pre-service student teaching is essential for the preparation and retention of special educators. The purpose of this study is to contrast the effects of length of pre-service student teaching received against other variables that exist within a pre-service preparation program. It was found that substantial pre-service student teaching experience has a strong effect on the probability that a beginning special educator will remain in the field 1 year. In addition, none of the effects of aspects of teacher pre-service preparation or teacher or school demographics analyzed had an impact on attrition, when controlling for the number of weeks of student teaching.