While achievement gaps have been well-established, much remains to be understood about the manner and extent to which school leadership either increases or decreases student access to opportunity to learn. The current study uses nationally representative samples of U.S. and Flemish students in Grade 4 from the 2011 Trends in International…

Background: Socioeconomic characteristics are persistently and systematically related to academic outcomes, despite long-standing efforts to reduce educational inequality. Ireland has a strong policy focus on alleviating educational disadvantage and has seen significant improvements in mathematics and science performance in recent years. This…

The purpose of this APA BEA Racial Disparities Task Force report is to examine the role of racism and bias on educational opportunity and achievement disparities experienced by children. Specifically, we seek to link racism explicitly to opportunity gaps by examining how racism operates on multiple levels. Using critical race theory,…

Several national and international studies have indicated that there is an achievement gap between student literary reading and student informational reading, with the gap favoring literary reading. One plausible explanation for this gap is that reading informational text has been neglected in early grades in the U.S. (Dreher, 2003; Kletzien &…

We examined instructional processes in classrooms where students with and without disabilities received mathematics instruction to understand the relationship among key instructional process variables and achievement as measured by interim and end-of-year summative assessments. Teachers (N = 78) completed instructional logs daily and administered…

Every child deserves educational opportunity and the chance to achieve, no matter his or her school, neighborhood or background. Unfortunately, large and persistent disparities in achievement among public school students in the District of Columbia indicate that all children here may not have the same opportunities. This Data Snapshot examines…

This paper explores the impact of recent economic volatility on higher education and discusses the lessons learned and the strategies for the future. The author believes that America's higher education is in danger, but has an extraordinary opportunity. Several reports point to the country's lagging behind other advanced countries in educational…