Academic Performance of Children With Sickle Cell Disease in the United States: A Meta-Analysis

Background: Students with sickle cell disease are at risk for poor academic performance due to the combined and/or interactive effects of environmental, psychosocial, and disease-specific factors. Poor academic performance has significant social and health consequences.Objective: To study academic achievement and attainment in children with sickle cell disease in the United States.Design: Medline, Embase, SCOPUS, CINAHL, ERIC, and PsycINFO were searched for peer-reviewed articles. Studies of children (ages 5–18) diagnosed with sickle cell disease of any genotype reporting academic achievement (standardized tests of reading, math, and spelling) or attainment (grade retention or special education) outcomes were included. Outcomes were analyzed using a random effects model. Achievement scores were compared to within study controls or normative expectations. Prevalence of grade retention and special education services were compared to national (United States) estimates for Black students. Age at assessment and overall IQ were evaluated separately for association with reading and mathematics scores. Subgroup analyses of reading and math scores were analyzed by cerebral infarct status (no cerebrovascular accident, silent infarct, stroke).Results: There were 44 eligible studies. Students with sickle cell disease scored 0.70, 0.87, and 0.80 (p < 0.001) SD below normative expectations on measures of reading, mathematics, and spelling, respectively. Compared to unaffected sibling and/or healthy controls (k = 8, n = 508), reading and math scores were 0.40 (p = 0.017) and 0.36 (p = 0.033) SD below expectations. Grade retention was approximately 10 times higher in students with sickle cell disease than Black students nationally. Intellectual functioning explained 97.3 and 85.8% of the variance in reading and mathematics performance, respectively (p < 0.001). Subgroup analyses revealed significant differences in reading (p = 0.034) and mathematics (p < 0.001) based on infarct status, with lower performance associated with presence of a silent infarct or stroke.Conclusion: Students with sickle cell disease demonstrate notable academic difficulties and are at high risk for grade retainment. Development of academic interventions and increased access to school support services are needed for this vulnerable population.Systematic Review Registration:https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42020179062.

Spatialization in Working Memory and its Relation to Math Anxiety

Working memory (WM) is one of the most important cognitive functions that may play a role in the relation between math anxiety (MA) and math performance. The processing efficiency theory proposes that the rumination and worrisome thoughts (induced by MA) result in less available WM resources (which are needed to solve math problems). At the same time, high MA individuals have lower verbal and spatial WM capacity in general. Extending these findings, we found that MA is also linked to the spatial coding of serial order in verbal WM: Subjects who organize sequences from left-to-right in verbal WM show lower levels of MA compared to those who do not spatialize. Furthermore, these spatial coders have higher verbal WM capacity, better numerical order judgement abilities and higher math scores. These findings suggest that that spatially structuring the verbal mind is a promising cognitive correlate of the MA and opens new avenues for exploring causal links between elementary cognitive processes and the MA.

The relative effect of student, family and school-related factors on math achievement by location of the school

This study aims to examine the relative effects of student, family and school-related characteristics on 4th grade students’ math achievement according to location of the school in Turkey. The data of 6435 students studying at 260 primary schools were analyzed using TIMSS-2015 database. The dependent variable of the study was students’ math scores and 19 factors constituting the student, family and school-related characteristics were the independent variables. The location of the school was classified as urban, suburban, medium-size city and village. The data was analyzed via single level multiple linear regression. The results revealed that the entire models explained the largest amount of variance (52%) in the schools located in the villages and the least amount of variance (44%) in those located in the urban area. Although all of the student, family and school-related characteristic sets were found to be significantly related with the achievement, the student-related characteristics explained the largest amount of variance in achievement. Students’ confidence in math contributed almost the highest amount of variance, and the early numeracy tasks, absenteeism in school, parents’ highest education level, parents’ highest occupation level, early numeric activities before school explained small amounts of variance in students’ math achievement in the schools of all locations.

Temperature and Low-stakes Cognitive Performance

In this paper we offer among the first evidence in a developing country context that transitory exposure to heat waves may disrupt low-stakes cognitive activities across a wide range of age cohorts. Matching cognitive test scores from a nationally representative longitudinal survey in China with weather data according to the exact time and geographic location of assessment, we find that exposure to a temperature above 32 degree celsius on the test date, relative to a day within 22-24 degree celsius, leads to a sizable decline in math scores by 0.088 SDs (equivalent to 0.30 years of education). The negative effect is more pronounced for less educated older adults taking math tests. Test takers living in hotter regions or having air conditioning installed on site are less vulnerable to extreme high temperatures, indicating the role of adaptation.

Athletics and Admissions: The Impact of the Penn State Football Scandal on Student Quality

We ask whether a scandal in a university’s athletics department affects the quality of the incoming student body. To do so, we evaluate the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State University in 2011. The violations involved a former employee with the crimes occurring a decade prior. The plausibly-exogenous shock allows us to make a causal identification of the scandal's effect on the university. We use synthetic control methods establishing economically meaningful impacts. We find that the average high school GPA is 0.12 points less and the proportion of students with high SAT Math scores is down 4.8 percentage points.

Sistem Pembobotan Berdasarkan Teknik Analisis Korelasi Untuk Penerimaan Siswa Baru Menggunakan Metode SAW

New Student Admission (PSB) is an annual program held by the school to get students, according to the criteria desired by the school. One of alternatif method to determine the ranking of prospective new students is to use the SAW (Simple Additive Weighting) method. To reduce the subjectivity that arises in the use of the SAW method, a correlation analysis technique is used which is useful for knowing the level of correlation of each criterion on new student admissions. Based on the results of the research, it was found that the parents' income criteria had the highest weight (0.851), followed by math scores (0.845), English scores (0.831), physics scores (0.577), physical ability (0.539), and finally student interest (0.282). Meanwhile, the results based on ranking using the SAW method showed that students A3 (Alternatif 3) had the largest V1 value compared to other alternatifs, which was 3.54. So it can be concluded that A3 are students with the best final scores compared to other students.

Effects of double-dose algebra on college persistence and degree attainment

In 2003, Chicago Public Schools introduced double-dose algebra, requiring two periods of math—one period of algebra and one of algebra support—for incoming ninth graders with eighth-grade math scores below the national median. Using a regression discontinuity design, earlier studies showed promising results from the program: For median-skill students, double-dose algebra improved algebra test scores, pass rates, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment. This study follows the same students 12 y later. Our findings show that, for median-skill students in the 2003 cohort, double-dose significantly increased semesters of college attended and college degree attainment. These results were not replicated for the 2004 cohort. Importantly, the impact of the policy on median-skill students depended largely on how classes were organized. In 2003, the impacts on college persistence and degree attainment were large in schools that strongly adhered to the cut-score-based course assignment, but without grouping median-skill students with lower-skill peers. Few schools implemented the policy in such a way in 2004.

Marital quality over the life course and child well-being from childhood to early adolescence

Research on marital quality and child well-being is currently limited by its common use of geographically constrained, homogenous, and often cross-sectional (or at least temporally limited) samples. We build upon previous work showing multiple trajectories of marital quality and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 (NLSY79) regarding mothers and their children (inclusive of ages 5–14). We examine how indicators of child well-being are linked to parental trajectories of marital quality (happiness, communication, and conflict). Results showed children whose parents had consistently poor marital quality over the life course exhibited more internalizing and externalizing problems, poorer health, lower quality home environments, and lower math and vocabulary scores than children of parents in consistently higher-quality marriages. Group differences remained stable over time for child health, home environment, and vocabulary scores. Group differences for internalizing problems declined over time, whereas group differences increased for externalizing problems and math scores. Initial advantages for females across nearly all indicators of child well-being tended to shrink over time, with boys often moving slightly ahead by mid adolescence. We discuss the implications of these findings in regard to children's development and well-being and suggest treating marriage as a monolithic construct betrays important variation within marriage itself.

Between-Year and Within-Year School Mobility: Different Effects by Race/Ethnicity

The current study investigated the effects of school mobility on the academic achievement of different racial/ethnic groups in four cohorts of students from a very large urban school district. In this study, I compared within-year and between-year mobility and, most importantly, account for all the schools students attended over the study period. Using a multiple membership model (MMM), the findings confirmed that, for all student groups, academic achievement was affected more by within-year school mobility than between-year school mobility. Black students had the highest mobility rates, both for between- and within-year mobility. Although Asian-American students achieved higher reading and math scores on average, they were more negatively impacted by within-year school mobility compared to other groups. The current study was able to pinpoint the students most at risk for negative outcomes following within-year mobility. The findings are discussed in the context of policy recommendations that can be adopted by school districts.

Why do Chinese adolescent girls outperform boys in achievement tests?

The current study extends our understanding of the widely documented gender educational gap in favor of females and its contributing factors through a mixed-methods analysis of the Chinese case. We develop an analytical framework that incorporates three mechanisms—intergenerational social contract, non-cognitive skills, and cumulative (dis)advantage across the life course—to empirically assess gendered achievement patterns and their social mechanisms among Chinese adolescents. The Chinese Family Panel Studies data documented that adolescent girls have higher verbal and math achievements than boys, with the gap larger in verbal than in math scores. Three factors account for these gender gaps: (1) (grand)parents hold higher expectations for girls, monitor girls more closely, and invest in girls as much as in boys; (2) girls possess better non-cognitive skills; and (3) girls’ stronger performance in earlier years gives them an edge for later achievement. The in-depth interviews contextualize these statistical patterns in profound changes in families’ logic in supporting girls’ education and in reconfigured gender discourses about girls’ learning behavior. From the perspective of intergenerational contracts, in the context of low fertility, daughters have become cherished as long-term family members at the receiving end of intensive investment, particularly as educational competition intensifies in post-reform China. Moreover, a gender discourse, engaged by family members and teachers, about girls’ superior non-cognitive skills such as compliance and self-discipline exerts a powerful influence as a self-fulfilling prophecy with regards to girls’ achievement. The findings underscore the need to account for both cultural and policy contexts, and nuanced gender work at home and in school in understanding the gender-gap reversal in contemporary China.