Policy Points Education-cognition research overlooks the role of education quality in shaping cognitive function at midlife and older ages, even though quality may be more responsive to federal and state investment in public schooling than attainment. For older US adults who attended school during the early to mid-20th century, the quality of US education improved considerably as federal and state investment increased. Ensuring access to high-quality primary and secondary education may protect against poor cognitive function at midlife and older ages, particularly among Black Americans and persons who complete less education. It may also play an important role in reducing health inequities.
BACKGROUND: Although educational attainment is consistently associated with better cognitive function among older adults, we know little about how education quality is related to cognitive function. This is a key gap in the literature given that the quality of US education improved considerably during the early to mid-20th century as state and federal investment increased. We posit that growing up in states with higher-quality education systems may protect against poor cognitive function, particularly among Black adults and adults who completed fewer years of school.
METHODS: We used prospective data on cognitive function from the Health and Retirement Study linked to historical data on state investment in public schools, restricting our sample to non-Hispanic White and Black adults born between 1914 and 1959 (19,096 White adults and 4,625 Black adults). Using race-stratified linear mixed models, we considered if state-level education quality was associated with level and decline in cognitive function and if these patterns differed by years of schooling and race.
RESULTS: Residing in states with higher-resourced education systems during childhood was associated with better cognitive function, particularly among those who completed less than 12 years of schooling, regardless of race. For White adults, higher-resourced state education systems were associated with higher scores of total cognitive function and episodic memory, but there were diminishing returns as resources increased to very high levels. For Black adults, the relationship between state education resources and cognitive function varied by age with positive associations in midlife and generally null or negative associations at the oldest ages.
CONCLUSIONS: Federal and state investment in public schools may provide students with opportunities to develop important cognitive resources during schooling that translate into better cognitive function in later life, especially among marginalized populations.

Schools and neighborhoods are adolescents\' primary environments, and each has a significant influence on their academic success. The majority of studies on educational attainment have examined the impact of a single context-either the school or the neighborhood-suggesting mixed findings on school and neighborhood effects as well as potential disparities across racial groups. To address this gap, the present study examined the roles of school quality and neighborhood disadvantage on educational attainment for White and Black adolescents. This study used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health data collected from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adolescents, merging multiple data sources including in-home surveys, school administrator surveys, student-level educational records, and contextual data. Educational attainment was measured using college enrollment and graduation status. School quality was a significant predictor of college enrollment and graduation for both White and Black adolescents. Neighborhood disadvantage is significantly associated with college enrollment for both racial groups; however, college graduation is significant only for White adolescents. These findings suggest that improving school quality is particularly important for educational attainment regardless of racial background. The article concludes with a discussion on the differential roles of school quality and neighborhood disadvantage in relation to White and Black adolescents.

Recent decades have seen a rapid acceleration in global participation in formal education, due to worldwide initiatives aimed to provide school access to all children. Research in high income countries has shown that school quality indicators have a significant, positive impact on numeracy and literacy-skills required to participate in the increasingly globalized economy. Schools vary enormously in kind, resources, and teacher training around the world, however, and the validity of using diverse school quality measures in populations with diverse educational profiles remains unclear. First, we assessed whether children\'s numeracy and literacy performance across populations improves with age, as evidence of general school-related learning effects. Next, we examined whether several school quality measures related to classroom experience and composition, and to educational resources, were correlated with one another. Finally, we examined whether they were associated with children\'s (4-12-year-olds, N = 889) numeracy and literacy performance in 10 culturally and geographically diverse populations which vary in historical engagement with formal schooling. Across populations, age was a strong positive predictor of academic achievement. Measures related to classroom experience and composition were correlated with one another, as were measures of access to educational resources and classroom experience and composition. The number of teachers per class and access to writing materials were key predictors of numeracy and literacy, while the number of students per classroom, often linked to academic achievement, was not. We discuss these results in the context of maximising children\'s learning environments and highlight study limitations to motivate future research. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We examined the extent to which four measures of school quality were associated with one another, and whether they predicted children\'s academic achievement in 10 culturally and geographically diverse societies. Across populations, measures related to classroom experience and composition were correlated with one another as were measures of access to educational resources to classroom experience and composition. Age, the number of teachers per class, and access to writing materials were key predictors of academic achievement across populations. Our data have implications for designing efficacious educational initiatives to improve school quality globally.

Primary and secondary school quality indicators need to be defined, assessed, and monitored due to their incomparable contributions to the entire educational process as well as for the overall development of a country. However, previous studies rarely emphasized indicators that have a substantial impact on school quality, especially in the context of developing countries. Bangladesh is one of them where this has yet to be adequately studied. To bridge this gap, this study aimed to explore the key \"driver\" constructs of primary and secondary level school quality. Adopting a quantitative cross-sectional research design, the present study was conducted between April 2021 to January 2022 at 128 primary and secondary level schools in 38 different districts of Bangladesh. Data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Empirical findings revealed that teacher quality (β = 0.588, t = 12.242, p < 0.001), technology (β = 0.279, t = 5.402, p < 0.001), school leadership (β = 0.132, t = 2.383, p < 0.05) have positive influence on students\' academic achievement which ultimately affects (β = 0.923, t = 92.713, p < 0.001) the overall quality of the school. While school environment does not significantly influence students\' academic achievement or school quality. The overall findings of this study are expected to assist the devolved authorities in implementing synchronized policies for the improvement of primary and secondary level school quality.

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The growing gender gap in educational attainment between men and women has raised concerns that the skill development of boys may be more sensitive to family disadvantage than that of girls. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) data we find, as do previous studies, that boys are more likely to experience increased problems in school relative to girls, including suspensions and reduced educational aspirations, when they are in poor quality schools, less-educated neighborhoods, and father-absent households. Following these cohorts into young adulthood, however, we find no evidence that adolescent disadvantage has stronger negative impacts on long-run economic outcomes such as college graduation, employment, or income for men, relative to women. We do find that father absence is more strongly associated with men\'s marriage and childbearing and weak support for greater male vulnerability to disadvantage in rates of high school graduation. An investigation of adult outcomes for another recent cohort from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 produces a similar pattern of results. We conclude that focusing on gender differences in behavior in school may not lead to valid inferences about the effects of disadvantage on adult skills.

In England, all state-funded schools are inspected by an independent government agency, the Office for Standards in Education, Children\'s Services and Skills (Ofsted). Inspections aim to hold schools accountable and to promote the improvement of education, with the results made available to the public. Ofsted reports intend to index school quality, but their influence on students\' individual outcomes has not been previously studied. The aim of the current study was to explore the extent to which school quality, as indexed by Ofsted ratings, is associated with students\' educational achievement, well-being and school engagement.
We use an England population-based sample of 4,391 individuals, for whom school performance at age 11 and GCSE grades at age 16 were accessed from the National Pupil Database, and who completed measures of well-being and school engagement at age 16.
We found that Ofsted ratings of secondary school quality accounted for 4% of the variance in students\' educational achievement at age 16, which was further reduced to 1% of the variance after we accounted for prior school performance at age 11 and family socioeconomic status. Furthermore, Ofsted ratings were weak predictors of school engagement and student well-being, with an average correlation of .03.
Our findings suggest that differences in school quality, as indexed by Ofsted ratings, have little relation to students\' individual outcomes. Accordingly, our results challenge the usefulness of Ofsted ratings as guides for parents and students when choosing secondary schools.

Persistent school segregation may allow advantaged groups to hoard educational opportunities and consign minority students to lower-quality educational experiences. Although minority students are concentrated in low-achieving schools, relatively little previous research directly links segregation to measures of school quality based on student achievement growth, which more plausibly reflect learning opportunities. Using a dataset of public elementary schools in California, this study provides the first analysis detailing the distribution of a growth-based measure of school quality using standard inequality indices, allowing disparities to be decomposed across geographic and organizational scales. We find mixed support for the school opportunity hoarding hypothesis. We find small White and Asian advantages in access to high-growth schools, but most of the inequality in exposure to school growth is within racial groups. Growth-based disparities both between and within groups tend to be on a more local scale than disparities in absolute achievement levels, focusing attention on within-district policies to mitigate school-based inequalities in opportunities to learn.

Individual academic achievement is a well-known predictor of adult health, and addressing education inequities may be critical to reducing health disparities. Disparities in school quality are well documented. However, we lack nationally representative studies evaluating the impact of school quality on adult health. We aim to determine whether high school quality predicts adult health outcomes after controlling for baseline health, socio-demographics and individual academic achievement.
We analyzed data from 7037 adolescents who attended one of 77 high schools in the Unites States and were followed into adulthood from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Selected school-level quality measures-average daily attendance, school promotion rate, parental involvement, and teacher experience-were validated based on ability to predict high school graduation and college attendance. Individual adult health outcomes included self-rated health, diagnosis of depression, and having a measured BMI in the obese range.
Logistic regressions controlling for socio-demographics, baseline health, health insurance, and individual academic performance demonstrated that school quality significantly predicted all health outcomes. As hypothesized, attending a school with lower average daily attendance predicted lower self-rated health (Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) 1.59, p = 0.003) and higher odds of depression diagnosis (AOR 1.35, p = 0.03); and attending a school with higher parent involvement predicted lower odds of obesity (AOR 0.69, p = 0.001). However, attending a school with higher promotion rate also predicted lower self-rated health (AOR1.20, p < 0.001).
High school quality may be an important, but complex, social determinant of health. These findings highlight the potential inter-dependence of education and health policy.

Relatively few studies examine the relationship between racial residential segregation and educational or cognitive outcomes. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the institutional resources model of neighborhood effects, I investigate one account of how macrostructural arrangements between race, neighborhood segregation, and school quality interact to produce inequalities in test scores. Consistent with the institutional resources model, results suggest that school quality varies across neighborhoods based, in part, on their degree of racial concentration. Indeed, school quality and other school characteristics mediate the relationship between racial concentration and verbal skills, particularly among black males. These findings have implications not only for inequalities in cognitive skills among blacks across residential space, but also between blacks and whites given high levels of residential segregation in the United States. In sum, findings illustrate yet another way in which residential segregation contributes to, and not merely reflects, racial inequalities.