Acknowledgements

A number of people contributed to the production of this report, and many more to the development of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002). In particular, we wish to thank Michael Ross and John Wirt from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for the quality of their input into this document. We also would like to thank Peggy Quinn of NCES for her support of this project. We are indebted to Bruce Daniel of Kforce Government Solutions who worked tirelessly to help us set up, organize, and analyze the ELS:2002 data.

Several people provided recommendations and insight that have improved the quality and clarity of this report. We would like to thank Judy Pollack of Educational Testing Service (ETS) for methodological assistance in using and interpreting the mathematics assessment scores in ELS:2002. We also would like to thank Michael Planty of NCES who provided feedback on conceptual issues during the formative stages of this project. We are particularly grateful to Matthew Adams, Sandy Eyster, Alexandra Henning, Akemi Kinukawa, Sally Ruddy, Alison Slade, Greg Strizek, Aparna Sundaram, Xiaolei Wang, and Zeyu Xu of the American Institutes for Research (AIR) for their careful review and guidance.

Lastly, we would like to thank the document preparation, editorial, and graphics support staff of RTI: Wallace Campbell, Craig Hollingsworth, Erich Lauff, Michelle Myers, Sharon Powell, and Daliah Rainone. Their hard work and attention to detail greatly improved the final version of this report.