Understanding how and why rising racial and economic segregation impacts achievement gaps is critical to closing them. Analyzing data from every school district in the U.S., researchers sean reardon, Erin Fahle, Heewon Jang, and Ericka Weathers evaluate how growing racial segregation interacts with unequal economic opportunities and contributes to…

U.S. public schools are highly segregated by both race and class. Prior research shows that the desegregation of Southern schools in the 1960s and 1970s led to significant benefits for black students, including increased educational attainment and higher earnings. We do not know, however, whether segregation today has the same harmful effects as…

This paper investigates to what extent socioeconomic status (SES)-based affirmative action in college admissions can produce racial diversity. Using simulation models, we investigate the racial and socioeconomic distribution of students among colleges under the use of race- or SES-based affirmative action policies, or targeted, race-based…

This paper simulates a system of socioeconomic status (SES)-based affirmative action in college admissions and examines the extent to which it can produce racial diversity in selective colleges. Using simulation models, we investigate the potential relative effects of race- and/or SES-based affirmative action policies, alongside targeted,…

We measure college enrollment selectivity gaps by race-ethnicity using a novel method that is sensitive to both the level (2- vs. 4-year) and selectivity of the college in which students enroll. We find that overall Hispanic-White and Black-White enrollment selectivity gaps closed in the United States between 1986 and 2014. This overall closing of…

Academic achievement gaps between high- and low-income students born in the 1990s were much larger than between cohorts born two decades earlier. Racial/ethnic achievement gaps declined during the same period. To determine whether these two trends have continued in more recent cohorts, we examine trends in several dimensions of school readiness,…

Researchers examined enrollment and family income data from the past 50 years at Catholic, other religious, and nonsectarian private elementary schools (that is, schools serving grades K-8). The study used data on families' incomes and elementary-school choices from the decennial census, Current Population Survey, U.S. Department of Education…

How are California's students doing? And are all groups of students receiving the same opportunities for educational success? How do patterns of educational outcomes in California compare to those in other states, and how have they changed in the last decade? In this study, the authors seek to provide a portrait of the state of educational…

I use standardized test scores from roughly 45 million students to describe the temporal structure of educational opportunity in over 11,000 school districts--almost every district in the US. For each school district, I construct two measures: the average academic performance of students in grade 3 and the within-cohort growth in test scores from…

There are nearly 14,000 school districts in the United States. Of these districts, there is very little information about the size of academic achievement gaps between whites and blacks and white and Hispanic students. This study was interested in district-level achievement patterns across the almost 14,000 school districts in the country because…

Schools are under increasing pressure to reclassify their English learner (EL) students to "fluent English proficient" status as quickly as possible. This article examines timing to reclassification among Latino ELs in four distinct linguistic instructional environments: English immersion, transitional bilingual, maintenance bilingual,…

Schools are under increasing pressure to reclassify their English learner (EL) students to "fluent English proficient" status as quickly as possible. This article examines timing to reclassification among Latino ELs in four distinct linguistic instructional environments: English immersion, transitional bilingual, maintenance bilingual,…

Most research on the middle school transition focuses on developmental and psychological changes around the age of the transition, and investigates or discusses the impact of such changes on academic performance, motivation and behavior in schools. In addition to intrapersonal developmental changes that middle-school students experience, they also…

In this study we examine trends in segregation by race and ethnicity in higher education from 1985 to 2013. We have three key findings. Over the past 30 years, students from different groups have attended college at increasingly similar rates; gaps are decreasing. But these decreases have been driven largely by large increases in minority student…

This article investigates the differences in academic achievement trajectories from elementary through middle school among English Learner (EL) students in four different instructional programs: English Immersion (EI), Transitional Bilingual (TB), Developmental Bilingual (DB), and Dual Immersion (DI). Comparing students with the same parental…