The present study explores the causal link between school climate, school violence, and a school's general academic performance over time using a school-level, cross-lagged panel autoregressive modeling design. We hypothesized that reductions in school violence and climate improvement would lead to schools' overall improved academic performance. School-level secondary analysis of the California Healthy Kids Survey was conducted at three points in time. Findings offer credible evidence that a school's overall improvement in academic performance is a central causal factor in reducing violence and enhancing a school's climate. In the discussion, we suggest that when strong efforts to improve academics are taken, schools may tend to include issues of climate and victimization as part of those academic reform efforts.

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Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have recently received waivers to the school accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). As the prospects for reauthorizing the Act in the near term are dim, these new accountability systems will be law for at least several years. Drawing on a four-part framework from the measurement literature, we describe and critique the approved waiver accountability plans, comparing them to the NCLB accountability rules. We find a mixed bag-some states have made large improvements and others have not. Overall we conclude that states missed opportunities to design more effective school accountability systems that might minimize negative unintended consequences of these policies. The article concludes with suggestions for state and federal policy in light of the available literature.

We estimate relative achievement effects of the four most commonly adopted elementary mathematics textbooks in the fall of 2008 and fall of 2009 in California. Our findings indicate that one book, Houghton Mifflin's California Math, is more effective than the other three, raising student achievement by 0.05 to 0.08 student-level standard deviations of the Grade 3 state standardized math test. We also estimate positive effects of California Math relative to the other textbooks in higher elementary grades. The differential effect of California Math is educationally meaningful, particularly given that it is a schoolwide effect and can be had at what is effectively zero marginal cost.

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