There is ongoing debate in the United States about just how diverse, inclusive, and equitable the opt-out movement--and grassroots education activism more broadly--has been over the past decade. Today, a prevailing stereotype holds that the opt-out movement predominantly mobilizes white, middle-class, and suburban parents and is therefore a force…

Despite a long-standing concern within the sociology of education for ameliorating educational inequality, the challenge of improving educational opportunities for disadvantaged students remains deeply entrenched. While 'macro' issues such as segregation and systemic inequalities in school funding and access to qualified teachers must be addressed…

Background: The audience response system (ARS) allows students to respond and interact anonymously with teachers via small handheld wireless keypads. Despite increasing popularity in classroom settings, the application of these devices to health education programming has not been studied. We assessed feasibility, engagement, and learning among…

Researchers and policymakers often assume that teacher turnover harms student achievement, though recent studies suggest this may not be the case. Using a unique identification strategy that employs school-by-grade level turnover and two classes of fixed-effects models, this study estimates the effects of teacher turnover on over 850,000 New York…

The purpose for this study was to determine the influence on achievement and classification rate into special education of racially, culturally, ethnically, linguistically diverse students following the use of a district-designed response to intervention (RtI) structure by examining local processes that may contribute to student achievement and…

While research and policy debates center on residents moving out of public housing, many families still live in public housing around the country; it is important to consider how to improve their well-being. Approximately 1.2 million units of public housing provide housing for about 3 million tenants throughout the country. In New York City, there…

In the United States, public housing developments are predominantly located in neighborhoods with low median incomes, high rates of poverty and disproportionately high concentrations of minorities. While research consistently shows that public housing developments are located in economically and socially disadvantaged neighborhoods, we know little…

Immigration and migration to New York City (NYC) collectively create a dynamic population of students. In this brief the authors use a decade of detailed, longitudinal data on NYC's 1st-8th graders to explore both the "stock" of students enrolled and the "flow" of new entrants in each academic year. Together, these paint a…

This article presents the results of a three-year study of "Gamestar Mechanic" (www.gamestarmechanic.com), a flash-based multiplayer online role-playing game developed for the MacArthur Foundation's digital media learning initiative by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Gamelab in New York. The game's objective is to help children…

Arguably the most important educational resource is teachers. Teachers and teaching quality are a central feature of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) which requires a "highly qualified teacher" in every core academic classroom. Many states and large districts also have policies in place to attract qualified teachers to…

The present research investigated the effects of an interdisciplinary program on Chinese music and culture, based on a sociocultural approach to multicultural music education. The program was introduced to 250 fifth- and sixth-grade children in three schools in New York, USA. Reports and questionnaires were collected from the teachers, students,…