I grew up on free school meals and now work as a school improvement adviser. In this article, I address discontinuities within my 'support and challenge' role, a role that can be constrained by educational policy enacted within a performative and panoptic culture of fear. Successive governments have concerned themselves with promoting equity…

Despite often being associated with anti-establishment, irreverent, and a do-it yourself (DIY) rejection of dominant culture, less considered may the collaborative, communal and curative threads of punk thinking, being and doing. From the outset, punk offered critiques and alternative ways of conceptualizing a world and ways of worlding, that…

The aim of this paper is to increase transparency in the scientific analysis of equity gaps in education. This should be useful in avoiding common ambiguities and misunderstandings in the discourse and in presenting the analyses results in a constructive way. We focused on a very basic aspect of transparency: Information availability. We…

This dissertation examines the impact of restorative practices on reducing discipline disparities among Latino youth in educational settings. Historically, Latino students have faced educational and socioeconomic inequalities that have resulted in reduced academic opportunities, lower graduation rates, and a persistent cycle of poverty. While…

An opportunity gap exists in the United States school system where students of color score lower on standardized tests and have fewer opportunities than their white counterparts. Culturally Relevant Education (CRE) theory attempts to close this gap, and is defined by Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995) as Pedagogy that rests on three criteria or…

The American School Counselor Association Closing-the-Gap Action Plan template is a tool created to help school counselors identify educational gaps and track interventions. We applied a transcendental, phenomenological qualitative research method to explore school counselors' use of the template to advocate for students. Our findings demonstrate…

Background/purpose: School-based management (SBM) has gained international attention for the promotion of student learning and educational development. Senegal is one of the initiatives of French speaking African countries that adopted the move towards promoting SBM at the school level, but lacks substantial evidence of its effectiveness in…

Introduced in England in 2011, the pupil premium policy was an ambitious reform aimed at tackling the persistent attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers. The policy provides school leaders with the professional autonomy to determine how pupil premium funding should be used. This article examines the…

This research addressed the problem of achievement gaps among elementary schools in Massachusetts. The purpose of this quantitative causal comparative study was to determine what effect, if any, funding had on elementary school accountability classification, student academic achievement, and per pupil expenditure rates. Equity theory indicated…

State takeovers of school districts typically involve dramatic changes to the workforce in the targeted school system and are often undertaken for the express purpose of improving a school system's finances. However, little is known about how takeover affects education spending, particularly the distribution of funds across schools within…

This report discusses the necessity of expanding school improvement policy and practice in order to meet the growing challenges related to reducing the achievement and opportunity gaps. Specifically, it highlights that student/learning supports are marginalized in current policy and that addressing the matter requires moving from a two to a three…

Empirical results are consistent with the hypothesis that socioeconomic factors contribute to initial disparities in performance that are perpetuated by demoralizing grading, testing, and grouping practices throughout the K-12 years. The hypothesis may explain why the achievement gap increases after children enter the school system, why Black…

"Assessing the Nation's Report Card" examines the history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and outlines plans for improving and modernizing the organization. Educational policy analyst Chester E. Finn, Jr. imparts a rare inside analysis of the evolution of the NAEP program at key moments in its history, and…

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education granted states the opportunity to apply for waivers from the core requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. In exchange, many states implemented systems of differentiated accountability that included a focus on schools with the largest achievement gaps between subgroups of students. We use…

The Partnership for College Completion (PCC) was founded to "advance equity in higher education" by supporting colleges and universities to improve college completion for Black, Latinx, and Pell-eligible students--those groups that experience persistent disparities in completion. Simultaneously, PCC engages in state policy reform to…