Browsing by Author "Loeb, Susanna"

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    Are Changes in Reported Social-Emotional Skills Just Noise? The Predictive Power of Longitudinal Differences in Self-Reports
    (2024) Kanopka, Klint; Claro, Susana; Loeb, Susanna; West, Martin; Fricke, Hans
    Prior work has shown that students’ self-reported levels on social-emotional measures predict achievement levels and gains, but we have little evidence on whether within-student changes in self-reports on social-emotional surveys are predictive of changes in theoretically related academic and behavioral outcomes. We use large-scale data from the California CORE districts to examine whether changes in individual reports on social-emotional measures from one school year to the next predict changes in state math and English language arts test scores and attendance. We show that changes in self-reported social-emotional measures predict changes in both achievement and attendance. These results are robust across model specifications. Moreover, the relationships between SEL and achievement and attendance outcomes are consistent across student subgroups.
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    Let's Spend Time Together: Text Messaging Parents to Help Math-Anxious Students
    (2021) Santana, Macarena; Nussbaum, Miguel; Claro, Susana; Piza, Sebastian; Imbarack, Patricia; Loeb, Susanna
    Even when parents have the time required to support their children's education, they can increase their children's anxiety about school when they try to help, especially if they are not confident in their own abilities. This study measures the effects of having parents complete nonacademic schoolwork with their teenage children. Half of the 422 participating parents were randomly assigned to receive weekly assignments for nonacademic activities to complete with their children, whereas the other half received information about upcoming mathematics tests. Mathematics-anxious students benefitexd from working on the nonacademic assignments, performing significantly better on their mathematics tests and decreasing their mathematics anxiety after treatment. These findings highlight the importance of involving parents in ways that feel nonthreatening to their children.
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    Let’s spend time together: text messaging parents to help math-anxious students
    (2021) Santana Sepúlveda, Macarena Paz; Nussbaum Voehl, Miguel; Claro Larrain, Susana; Piza Lería, Sebastián; Imbarack Dagach, Patricia; Loeb, Susanna
    Even when parents have the time required to support their children’s education, they can increase their children’s anxiety about school when they try to help, especially if they are not confident in their own abilities. This study measures the effects of having parents complete nonacademic schoolwork with their teenage children. Half of the 422 participating parents were randomly assigned to receive weekly assignments for nonacademic activities to complete with their children, whereas the other half received information about upcoming mathematics tests. Mathematics-anxious students benefited from working on the nonacademic assignments, performing significantly better on their mathematics tests and decreasing their mathematics anxiety after treatment. These findings highlight the importance of involving parents in ways that feel nonthreatening to their children.
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    Students With Growth Mindset Learn More in School: Evidence From California’s CORE School Districts
    (2024) Claro Larrain, Susana; Loeb, Susanna
    Previous research provides evidence that developing a growth mindset—believing that one’s capabilities can improve—promotes academic achievement. Although this phenomenon has undergone prior study in a representative sample of ninth graders in the United States, it has not been studied in representative samples of other grade levels or with standardized assessment measures of achievement rather than more subjective grades. Using a rich longitudinal data set of more than 200,000 students in Grades 4 through 7 in California who we followed for a year until they were in Grades 5 through 8, this article describes growth mindset gaps across student groups and confirms, at a large scale, the predictive power of growth mindset for achievement gains. We estimate that a student with growth mindset who is in the same school and grade level and has the same background and achievement characteristics as a student with a fixed mindset learns 0.066 SD more annually in English language arts, approximately 18% of the average annual growth or 33 days of learning if we assume learning growth as uniform across the 180 days of the academic year. For mathematics, the corresponding estimates are 0.039 SD, approximately 17% of average annual growth or 31 days of learning.