Measuring opportunities to learn (OTL) is crucial for evaluating education quality and equity, but obtaining accurate and comprehensive OTL data at a large scale remains challenging. We attempt to address this issue by investigating measurement concerns in data collection and sampling. With the primary goal of estimating group-level OTLs for large…

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is an internationally known arts institution in Washington, DC. The Kennedy Center recognized that many young people need equitable and ongoing access to the arts in schools because access to the arts often depends on school budgets, scheduling constraints, and administrative commitment. In 2009,…

Children benefit from educational settings with a knowledgeable, caring team providing educational experiences. This mixed-method study aimed to gain insight into the perceptions of school employees who work with students who live in poverty. This study examined school staff's knowledge, perceptions, and experiences to foster student development…

Northern Ireland has a deeply divided education system with demarcation most notable along ethno/religious and social class lines. The former is largely attributable to the historical organisation of the schools estate based on religion, and the latter is associated with a system of academic selection that filters children into grammar and…

This paper explores how prospective teachers across five geographic and educational contexts constructed understandings of equity literacy within literacy methods courses. Artifacts of what equity "looks like" in prospective teachers' field placements in early childhood, elementary, and secondary literacy classrooms were analyzed from…

Spanish-English bilingual education programmes have spread widely in Spain in recent years. Although some evaluation research has already been conducted, the effects of this policy in terms of equity have received little attention. We analyse whether the supply of 'bilingual schools' is modulated by a set of factors that may affect the equality of…

In the midst of the pandemic, this school district made a significant investment with recovery dollars to expand enrichment opportunities in art, music, and physical education for students in their K-8 schools. The hypothesis was increasing the quality and quantity of these opportunities, the school district would increase student engagement, lead…

This study examines the role of nature in children's literature on bookshelves in early childhood education settings to explore how books in kindergarten classrooms represent nature and the relationship between nature and humans. The findings are (a) cursory references, (b) human autonomy over nature, and (c) nature as a learning opportunity.…

Teachers' engagement with high quality continuous professional development (CPD) opportunities has repeatedly and consistently been linked to an array of positive outcomes for students, teachers, and the wider school community. In light of this, multiple countries have developed and designed frameworks for CPD, such as Cosán in Ireland, the CPD…

Do children with better reading competence read more, or do avid readers increase their reading competence? This highly relevant question has been discussed for many years, yet conclusive results are rare. Previous studies suffer from small sample sizes or omitted variable bias, rendering their findings questionable. We provide new insight using…

A key lever for improving instructional quality centers on providing teachers with professional development (PD) opportunities customized to their instructional needs. To examine whether teacher evaluation reforms led such PD opportunities, we explored the extent to which teachers received PD based on their instructional profiles. To do so, we…

Background/Context: Both correlational and experimental evidence suggests that having access to books can be a key resource for accelerating the literacy outcomes for children. Results from a 20-year study across 27 nations by Evans, Kelley, Sikora, and Treiman (2010), suggest that children growing up in homes with many books obtain 3 years more…

Attempting to balance all the aspects of teaching can be overwhelming and challenging without the appropriate measures for novice teachers. The purpose of the mixed-methods study was to examine the challenges and opportunities in teacher retention of K-12 novice teachers in a rural, south Mississippi school district. Novice teachers may struggle…

This study explores and compares the role of Bangladesh's universal preschool in enhancing learning achievement at the end of primary education before and after introducing a new policy. Children's access to preschool has increased, and the learning achievement of the preschool non-participants' decreased after introducing the new policy. The…

Purpose: We examine the content, context, and management of literacy learning opportunities in a large, diverse sample in the US and whether these opportunities were differentiated by children's oral language and decoding skill levels. Method: A total of 1,404 children in 153 preschool-through-third-grade classrooms were observed for several…