In this critical qualitative study, we draw on interviews with sitting Presidents of Color in one state to explore the racialized dimensions of the college and university presidential search and appointment process. Informed by Ray's racialized organization tenets of whiteness as a credential and racialized agency, our findings show that…

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed what educators, policymakers, and researchers have long known--namely, that learning opportunities and outcomes are intimately intertwined with other aspects of children's and families' lives. The list of social forces outside the education sector that can affect learning is endless and includes economic experiences…

Colleges and universities are increasingly turning to algorithms that predict college-student success to inform various decisions, including those related to admissions, budgeting, and student-success interventions. Because predictive algorithms rely on historical data, they capture societal injustices, including racism. In this study, we examine…

Given today's crisis-laden context filled with educational challenges, it is critical to understand how principals express hope through their leadership to navigate these challenges. Through an extensive qualitative research study conducted in 2019-2022, I examined how 50 principals expressed and used hope in varying degrees to hinder or…

"Educational equity" is universally lauded but equally ill-defined. At least five contrasting meanings of equity are in current use: equal distributions of outcomes across populations; equal outcomes for every child; equal resource allocations across students, schools, districts, states, or nations; equal experiences for each child; and…

This paper's purpose is to review theoretical explanations of college transitions, offer a critique of their utility, and make an explicit argument that the field of higher education would benefit from a shift from a view of transition as induction or development to transition as becoming. Moreover, we propose that the use of legitimate peripheral…

Although antiracism activism has contributed to substantive progress under certain circumstances and in certain contexts, little research attempts to theorize how antiracism activism is manifest across contexts. In this article, we explore individual and collective antiracist actions within and outside schools. We introduce a theoretical framework…

We employ the metaphor of an educational ecosystem to explain how racial inequity in special education manifests in a midsized urban school district via equity expressions and experiences. We focus on two ecosystems operating at the mesol-evel within school districts: 1) special education and 2) equity ecosystems. We show how these educational…

Cross-national studies on socioeconomic status (SES) achievement gaps have focused on the size of the gap and given less attention to where in the SES distribution the achievement gap tends to be relatively large within a society, and whether this location varies across countries. We estimate the relative size of achievement gaps between students…

In the context of continued equity gaps in student success within and beyond STEM, this paper explored the extent to which the representation of underrepresented racial minority (URM) and first-generation college students predict grades in postsecondary STEM courses. The analyses examined 87,027 grades received by 11,868 STEM-interested students…

To contain the initial spread of the SARS-CoV2 virus and the COVID-19 disease, many countries opted to close schools. However, the importance of schooling to mitigate inequalities motivated many economies to reopen schools after having formulated various COVID-19 mitigation and containment strategies. Using an exploratory sequential mixed method…

This paper presents comparative information on the strength of the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and literacy skills at ages 6-8, drawing on data from France, Germany, Japan, Rotterdam (Netherlands), the United Kingdom, and the United States. We investigate whether the strength of the association between SES and literacy skills in…

Despite the growing popularity of computing bachelor's programs, women remain vastly underrepresented in these fields. Using Social Cognitive Career Theory and intersectionality as guiding theories, this qualitative study explores how postsecondary institutions shape women's experiences choosing and entering computing bachelor's programs.…

Restorative justice has the potential to re-frame schools as caring and politically conscious educational spaces. As it moves to the mainstream, however, it risks being co-opted by the carceral logics that undergird the schooling of Black students in the United States. This ethnographic analysis interrogates how restorative justice provides…

Research on developmental education reform has given surprisingly limited attention to what happens inside the classroom between faculty and students. Our qualitative study used interview data from 20 faculty and 20 students in corequisite math and English courses at one of the nation's largest and most racially diverse community college systems.…