According to a research abstract that will be presented on Wednesday, June 10, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, getting more high-quality sleep is associated with better academic performance. The positive relationship is especially relevant to performance in math.

An educational study unprecedented in scope finds that children who enter kindergarten with elementary mathematics and reading skills are the most likely to experience later academic success -- whether or not they have social or emotional problems.

Children entering kindergarten with elementary math and reading skills are the most likely to do well in school later, even if they have various social and emotional problems, say researchers who examined data from six studies of close to 36,000 preschoolers. Children’s attention-related skills also mattered, the researchers found.

Teens exposed to secondhand smoke at home are at increased risk of test failure in school, suggests a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

What can colleges and universities do to help their low-performing students set and attain higher academic goals while transitioning successfully to campus life?

Teacher performance pay is a frequently discussed and controversial topic among kindergarten through 12th-grade educators. Recent findings by economics professors at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Vanderbilt University suggest that states and school districts in the United States begin developing programs that examine the effects of linking teacher pay to student achievement.

A new report by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) finds that six in 10 students who enter the California community college system as freshmen with high school diplomas and aspirations to transfer to four-year institutions drop out or lower their academic sights after just one semester. The report recommends increasing support for these students.

Students in “year-round” schools don't learn more than their peers in traditional nine-month schools, new research has found.

Microsoft Corp. and Tutor.com announced a strategic alliance that will provide on-demand tutoring to students who purchase Microsoft® Student with Encarta® Premium 2008, the recently launched homework productivity suite of software designed to help students complete assignments and excel in difficult subjects such as math, science and foreign languages.

Returning to the classroom after a three-month break signals that summer is drawing to a close. For children and teens, the end of summer also means an end to the long daylight hours that allows them to stay out later, as well as the long lazy mornings of “sleeping in”.

Does the time of year in which a child is conceived influence future academic achievement? Yes, according to research by neonatologist Paul Winchester, M.D., Indiana University School of Medicine professor of clinical pediatrics. Dr. Winchester, who studied 1,667,391 Indiana students, presents his finding on May 7 at the Pediatric Academic Societies' annual meeting.

Although intelligence is generally thought to play a key role in children's early academic achievement, aspects of children's self-regulation abilities-including the ability to alternately shift and focus attention and to inhibit impulsive responding--are uniquely related to early academic success and account for greater variation in early academic progress than do measures of intelligence.