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The California Families Project (CFP) is an ongoing longitudinal study of Mexican origin families in Northern California. This study uses community, school, family, and individual characteristics to examine developmental pathways that increase risk for and resilience to drug use in Mexican-origin youth. This study also examines the impact that economic disadvantage and cultural traditions have in Mexican-origin youth. The CFP includes a community-based sample of 674 families and children of Mexican origin living in Northern California, and includes annual assessments of parents and children. Participants with Mexican surnames were drawn at random from school rosters of students during the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 school year. Data collection included multi-method assessments of a broad range of psychological, familial, scholastic, cultural, and neighborhood factors. Initiation of the research at age 10 was designed to assess the focal children before the onset of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug (ATOD) use, thus enabling the evaluation of how hypothesized risk and resilience mechanisms operate to exacerbate early onset during adolescence or help prevent its occurrence. This study includes a diversity of families that represent a wide range of incomes, education, family history, and family structures, including two-parent and single-parent families. The accompanying data file consists of 674 family cases with each case representing a focal child and at least one parent (Two-parent: n=549, 82 percent; Single-parent: n=125, 18 percent). Of the 3,139 total variables, 839 pertain to the focal child, 1,376 correspond to the mother, and 908 items pertain to the father. Please note: While the California Families Project is a longitudinal study, only the baseline data are currently available in this data collection.

The Digital Scaffolding for English Language Arts project examines the effect of Visual Syntactic Text Formatting (VSTF) on reading and writing outcomes of 7th and 8th-grade students. VSTF is a technology which reformats text to facilitate reading comprehension. The study used a randomized control trial and was set in an urban school district. The project considers both teachers and students in its implementation of VSTF within the classroom. Variables include demographics, classroom observations, survey responses, annual state assessment results and an end of the year on demand writing task.

This study sought to advance understanding of how school climate is a critical factor in school safety and violence prevention. Middle school and high school students and staff were surveyed over the span of eight years from 2013-2020. Middle school students and staff were surveyed during odd years (4 waves of data collection), and high school students and staff were surveyed the other even years (again four years of data collection). All four years of data per group were combined into a single dataset. A final file was created pooling all eight years of data collection averaging student and staff responses by school. Both the student and teacher/staff surveys covered two domains: school climate and safety conditions. The school climate domain included perceptions of the school's disciplinary practices, student support efforts, and degree of student engagement in school. The safety conditions domain covered reports of bullying, teasing, sexual harassment, and other forms of peer aggression, including threats of violence, physical assault, dating aggression, and gang activity. Previous research conducted by the Principal Investigators showed that an authoritative school climate characterized by high structure (strict but fair discipline and high academic expectations) and high support (positive teacher-student relationships) is associated with many positive outcomes. Students who attend schools with an authoritative school climate demonstrated more engagement in school, have higher school attendance and academic achievement, and are more likely to graduate. Students who experience a structured and supportive school climate may be more willing to follow school rules, respond to their teachers, and treat one another in a respectful manner. This study continues that prior work.

The Kidsteps II Project tested the efficacy of the Second Step Early Learning (SSEL) curriculum in improving children's social-emotional skills (SE), executive functioning (EF), and school readiness skills in preschool relative to usual curricular frameworks, and the predictive power of the intervention on kindergarten readiness and kindergarten success. Kidsteps II, a 4-year study funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, included 67 classrooms randomly assigned to one of two, two-year cohorts. In each cohort, half of the classrooms were randomly assigned to receive the SSEL curriculum (intervention condition), and half continued usual practices (control/comparison condition). Teachers in intervention classrooms were provided with training and implementation support for two years. Teachers in both conditions completed social skills rating scales on participating children at the beginning and end of the year (n=1497). Parent reports of children's social skills were also obtained for 725 children. Four-year-old children entering kindergarten the following year (n=978) were individually tested on social skills, executive functioning, and academic skills at the beginning and end of their pre-k year. Additional classroom observation and coded lesson plans documented fidelity, implementation, classroom climate, and classroom quality. Intervention teachers also completed weekly measures of curriculum implementation. Pre-k children from the first three years of the study were followed into kindergarten, and kindergarten teachers completed social skills rating scales and academic readiness mid-year, and school records were obtained for kindergarten screening scores, special services received during kindergarten, and promotion to first grade. The study addressed the following questions: Does SSEL improve children's social emotional skills, executive functioning, and school readiness skills as measured by teachers and independent assessors in preschool compared to classrooms not using SSEL? Do children participating in SSEL classrooms have stronger school system administered kindergarten readiness screenings, better kindergarten teacher-rated social skills and academic competency, and higher 1st grade promotion compared to children entering from comparison classrooms? To what extent are kindergarten readiness screenings and kindergarten teacher's ratings of social skills and academic competence mediated by preschool children's social emotional skills and executive functioning? Is there an effect of SSEL on preschool classroom climate?

Socio-emotional behaviours in early childhood, including self-regulation, emotional problems, and peer problems, have been shown to individually influence academic achievement in primary and secondary school. Environmental and demographic factors have also been shown to influence a child's academic development. The current study extends previous work to consider - concurrently, using structural equation modelling - a broader array of antecedents and measures of social-emotional development to understand their relative effects on academic outcomes. Parent-report data on a nationally representative sample of children (n = 17,035) at ages 3 and 5 years, and academic assessment at age 7, were drawn from the Millennium Cohort Study for longitudinal modelling. Results indicate the individual and collective contribution of socio-emotional, environmental, and demographic antecedents, expanding the current literature on predictors of child academic achievement in primary school. The results suggest that malleable factors in early childhood are important predictors of later academic success, and thus may be viable targets for intervention.

The research goals of the Baseline survey were to establish a panel of sophomore and senior high school students in the state of Texas that can be followed to examine the decision-making, knowledge and attitudes of students regarding post-high school life course decisions in light of the existence of the Top 10 legislation in Texas. The baseline survey was intended to establish benchmark measures. Follow-up surveys with a subsample of the students will be used to track the evolution of student decision-making about college attendance among those who attend college (full time or part time) immediately after high school graduation as well as those who decide to attend college one or more years after graduation. The Baseline survey objectives called for the collection of 33,000 to 35,000 completed interviews with sophomores and seniors in Texas public high schools using a sample survey design. A probability sample of 100 high schools was desired. Interviews were to be conducted in class using self-administered surveys. This would require district and high school cooperation with the survey effort. Analysis was desired at multiple levels of the education system -- students, schools and districts. Because of the multilevel nature of the analytic goals of the study, a census of sophomores and seniors was desired within the schools that were selected into the survey (to facilitate multilevel analyses). At the student level, analyses were desired separately by racial/ethnic subgroup: non-Hispanic Whites; African Americans; Asians and Hispanics. Moreover, analyses of likely college goers and non-college goers were desired. The Wave 2 Senior Study is the first follow-up with a subsample of baseline seniors. This phase tracks the evolution of student decision-making about college attendance among those who decide to attend college (full or part time) immediately after high school graduation, as well as those who decide to attend college one or more years after graduation. The survey also covers post high school activities including military enlistment, employment, civic activities, high school experiences, life events, self-esteem, and current living status. The following demographic subgroups will be used for comparative analyses: Non-Hispanic Whites, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. Additionally, separate analyses are desired for students attending college or technical school and students not attending college one year after attending high school. The Sophomore Wave 2 "Stayer Leaver" Survey is the first follow-up with a subsample of baseline sophomores. Most of the respondents were in their senior year of high school at the time of the interview. The focus of the survey is on the student's activities during the senior year and their plans after high school. An important component of this study was to partition the sophomore cohort into Stayers and Leavers. Stayers represent those students who have attended the same high school from the baseline survey in 2002 to the Wave 2 survey in 2004. Analysis of students who stayed at the same high school will determine whether students' knowledge of the Top 10 Percent law increased and whether they changed their college aspirations as they progressed through school. Leavers are those students that have changed schools or dropped out (and did not return to the same high school) between the baseline survey and the Wave 2 survey. Analysis of the leaver students will determine whether, how many, and w,hich students deliberately changed schools in order to qualify for the benefits of the Top 10 Percent law. Students that had dropped out of school, regardless of whether they returned to school or not, were asked a series of questions that explored reasons for dropping out and activities during their time away from school. Students that dropped out, but then returned to the same high school are defined as Stayers. Those that dropped out and did not return to school, or attended a different school, are defined as Leavers. The Senior Wave 3 survey is the second follow-up interview with the subsample of 8,345 baseline seniors. The Wave 3 survey sought to determine students' educational pursuits and levels of attainment, and other life choices, four years after high school graduation. For students following a four-year path through college or university, graduation would occur in 2006, but a special strength of Wave 3 is its ability to identify delayed college entry; transfers among post-secondary institutions, including transfers to and from community colleges; withdrawal from college; and variation in school-to-work trajectories for students according to class rank. The THEOP administrative data consists of college applications and enrollee college transcripts obtained from nine Texas universities--seven public and two private institutions. For the public institutions, freshman Application Data spans several years prior to the implementation of the Texas Top 10 Percent law in 1998, and extends until at least 2002. Application Data for the two private institutions is available only for the period after implementation of the automatic admission law.