Guest Editors’ Note

In "Examining the Relationship Between Teachers' Instructional Practices and Students' Mathematics Achievement," Firmender, Gavin, and McCoach (2014) examined the relationship between teachers' implementation of two discourse-related instructional practices (engaging students in verbal communication and encouraging the use of appropriate vocabulary) and student achievement. (2014), also investigates the effects of STEM high schools, specifically specialized science high schools, but differs from the previous two studies in several ways: (a) It uses a comparison group of participants in Talent Search programs who did not graduate from a specialized science high school, (b) it is a quantitative rather than qualitative study, and (c) it investigated the association between these programs and a distal out- come, completion of an undergraduate degree in a science-related area.