This study focuses on the varying effectiveness of three mediation styles—facilitation, formulation, and manipulation—on international crises. Effectiveness is assessed in terms of three outcome variables: formal agreement, post-crisis tension reduction, and contribution to crisis abatement. The authors analyze new data on the mediation process from the International Crisis Behavior project (1918-2001). Manipulation has the strongest effect on the likelihood of both reaching a formal agreement and contributing to crisis abatement. Facilitation has the greatest influence on increasing the prospects for lasting tension reduction. The authors explore how the different styles affect the strategic bargaining environment to explain these differences in impact. The findings suggest that mediators should use a balance of styles if they are to maximize their overall effectiveness.

This meta-analysis reviewed research on summer reading interventions conducted in the United States and Canada from 1998 to 2011. The synthesis included 41 classroom-and homebased summer reading interventions, involving children from kindergarten to Grade 8.Compared to control group children, children who participated in classroom interventions, involving teacher-directed literacy lessons, or home interventions, involving child-initiated book reading activities, enjoyed significant improvement on multiple reading outcomes. The magnitude of the treatment effect was positive for summer reading interventions that employed research-based reading instruction and included a majority of low-income children. Sensitivity analyses based on within-study comparisons indicated that summer reading interventions had significantly larger benefits for children from low-income backgrounds than for children from a mix of income backgrounds. The findings highlight the potentially positive impact of classroomand home-based summer reading interventions on the reading comprehension ability of lowincome children.Keywords: meta-analysis, reading comprehension, low-income children, summer learning loss Effective summer interventions may be critical to improving children's reading achievement from kindergarten to Grade 8, particularly for low-income children. Policymakers have adopted two primary intervention strategies for improving children's reading achievement during the summer months: classroom-and home-based summer reading interventions.Classroom-based summer reading interventions are designed to remediate children's academic weaknesses through instructional activities led by schoolteachers, college and graduate students, and university researchers. A meta-analysis of experimental studies (Cooper, Charlton, Valentine, & Muhlenbruck, 2000) indicated that classroom-based summer reading programs improved student achievement by .14 standard deviations. More recently, home-based summer reading interventions have been implemented as a potentially cost-effective strategy for preventing reading loss among low-income children (McCombs et al., 2011). Snow, & Martin-Glenn, 2006; National Reading Panel, 2000). As a result, policymakers and practitioners have sought to implement summer reading interventions that show strong evidence of efficacy and use research-based instructional practices. Given the national imperative to close income-based disparities in student achievement, there is a growing need to understand the programmatic characteristics of effective summer reading interventions and their potential benefits for low-income children (McCombs et al., 2011). This updated metaanalytic review synthesizes results from 41 summer reading interventions, involving children from kindergarten to Grade 8. Defining Summer Reading InterventionsSummer reading interventions are usually implemented inside or outside classrooms (McCombs et al., 2011). Although context is only one characteristic of a summer reading intervention, theorists (Bronfen...

Early studies examining seasonal variation in academic achievement inequality generally concluded that socioeconomic test score gaps grew more over the summer than the school year, suggesting schools served as “equalizers.” In this study, we analyze seasonal trends in socioeconomic status (SES) and racial/ethnic test score gaps using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–2011 (ECLS-K:2011), which includes more school-year and summer rounds than previous national studies. We further examine how inequality dynamics are influenced by the operationalization of inequality. Findings are consistent with a story in which schools initially accelerate relatively lower-achieving groups’ learning more so than higher-achieving groups; however, this school-year equalizing is not consistently maintained and sometimes reverses. When operationalizing inequality as changes in relative position, the reversal of school-year equalizing is more pronounced.

Research on science achievement disparities by gender and race/ethnicity often neglects the beginning of the pipeline in the early grades. We address this limitation using nationally representative data following students from Grades 3 to 8. We find that the Black–White science test score gap (–1.07 SD in Grade 3) remains stable over these years, the Hispanic–White gap narrows (–.85 to –.65 SD), and the Asian–White Grade 3 gap (–.31 SD) closes by Grade 8. The female–male Grade 3 gap (–.23 SD) may narrow slightly by eighth grade. Accounting for prior math and reading achievement, socioeconomic status, and classroom fixed effects, Grade 8 racial/ethnic gaps are not statistically significant. The Grade 8 science gender gap disappears after controlling for prior math achievement.

Theory suggests that teachers’ implicit racial attitudes affect their students, but large-scale evidence on U.S. teachers’ implicit biases and their correlates is lacking. Using nationwide data from Project Implicit, we found that teachers’ implicit White/Black biases (as measured by the implicit association test) vary by teacher gender and race. Teachers’ adjusted bias levels are lower in counties with larger shares of Black students. In the aggregate, counties in which teachers hold higher levels of implicit and explicit racial bias have larger adjusted White/Black test score inequalities and White/Black suspension disparities.