Although Black and Latinx students disproportionately face exclusionary school discipline, prior research finds that the likelihood of suspension for Black students decreases when they are taught by greater proportions of Black teachers. Little prior work, however, has examined whether these effects generalize to large, diverse, urban school…

African American and Hispanic students receive more punitive school discipline than White students even when students of color commit similar infractions as Whites. Similarly, students with a disability status are more likely to experience harsher discipline in schools compared to their counterparts without a disability label. This study examines…

Our work aims to substantiate and extend earlier findings on the effects of student-teacher race matching on academic achievement using longitudinal data for students in Grades 3 through 8 in Tennessee. We examine heterogenous effects not only by racial subgroup and student preparedness, as explored in prior literature, but also by levels of…

This study compared bullying experiences between ethnic minority youth and Korean majority youth in South Korea, and examined whether the student-teacher relationship is associated with their bullying experiences. Participants comprised 148 ethnic minority students and 165 Korean majority students in Grades 4 to 11 in South Korea. Bivariate…

In this ethnographic study, we look closely at everyday classroom interactions in order to examine the complex process of creating equitable classroom communities in racially and socioeconomically diverse schools. We use the lens of relational difference (Abu El-Haj, 2006) to examine how students negotiate social boundaries within their new…

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to examine the extent to which differences were present in discipline consequence assignments by the ethnicity/race and economic status for Grade 6, 7, and 8 girls in Texas. In the first investigation, the degree to which discipline consequence assignments differed by the ethnicity/race…

This report examines how students are performing across the entire 2020-2021 school year in reading and mathematics during the pandemic. Based on insights from millions of student assessments, the report explores key questions effected by COVID-19 in education, including: (1) How much did students grow during the 2020-2021 school year compared…

Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest partnered with the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) to examine Arkansas's middle and high school indicators of postsecondary readiness and success, building on an earlier study of these indicators (Hester et al., 2021). Academic indicators include attaining proficiency on state achievement tests,…

Background/Context: There is broad agreement about the benefits of taking AP and/or IB courses in high school. Nonetheless, student access to such courses remains uneven and inequitable, due largely to the practice of tracking students by perceived "ability." These tracking practices are often defended based on the contention that…

This report demonstrates the effects of the Arkansas Better Chance program (ABC) on late elementary and middle school outcomes. End of year assessments, which varied over the course of the study years, were examined for students of three preschool cohorts. Students included in the statewide study received free lunch all years and were enrolled in…

This study presents estimates of Black-White, Hispanic-White, and income achievement gaps using data from two different types of reading and mathematics assessments: constructed-response assessments that were likely more cognitively demanding and state achievement tests that were likely less cognitively demanding (i.e., composed solely or largely…

Test-score data show that both low-income and racial-minority children score lower, on average, on states' elementary-school accountability tests compared with higher-income children or white children. This report explores the relationship between racial and socioeconomic test-score gaps in New England metropolitan areas and two factors associated…

Researchers attempting to show that music has positive effects on children need to understand and control for preexisting differences between those who do and do not select into musical participation in the first place. Within a large-scale, communitywide, prospective, longitudinal study of predominantly low-income, ethnically diverse students (N…

This longitudinal study analyzes high school graduation outcomes of students who entered New York City public schools in grade 5 or 6 as English learner students. It extends the work of Kieffer and Parker (2016) by investigating the high school graduation rates and the types of diploma earned by the 1,734 students who entered New York City public…

The period of early adolescence is characterized by dramatic changes, simultaneously affecting physiological, psychological, social, and cognitive development. The physical transition from elementary to middle school can exacerbate the stress and adversity experienced during this critical life stage. Middle school students often struggle to find…