The movie "Try Harder!" features a group of students at Lowell High School in San Francisco, California, as they navigate their elite public institution and apply to top-tier universities. A critical analysis of this film allows us to understand new trends and emerging discourses in urban cities, showing the way racialized groups are pit…

The University of Minnesota Talented Youth Mathematics Program (UMTYMP) is a selective, five-year accelerated mathematics program for students in grades 6-12. During the program, students take college mathematics courses on University of Minnesota campuses, starting with algebra and continuing through logic and proofs, linear algebra, and…

First-generation immigrants (FGIs) are eager to achieve the American dream and acquire the advantages a bachelor's degree affords. FGIs compared to their second-generation, third-generation and native peers fare better educationally. But, this comparison obscures across racial variation within a single-nativity status. As such, it is important to…

Due to the model minority myth, scant attention has been given to the college preparation of Asian American (AA) students. Using the national sample of High School Longitudinal Study of 2009-2013, this study examined associations among student-counselor interactions, school connectedness, and college enrollment of AA students. The results of the…

Despite growing diversity among Asian Americans, little attention has been given to the diverse experiences and outcomes of Asian American subgroups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Using a nationally representative data set, High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), this study examines Asian American…

For students entering Grade 9 in the 2014-15 school year and later, Texas modified its public high school graduation requirements by enacting House Bill 5 (HB 5) during the 83rd Texas Legislature. These changes provided students with greater flexibility in the courses required for graduation (including eliminating Algebra II as a required course)…

Over the last decade, secondary schools around the United States have rapidly adopted ethnic studies courses. For instance, California's governor mandated ethnic studies as a high school graduation requirement in 2021 (Magcalas, 2023). According to scholars, ethnic studies courses offer educational experiences that disrupt the erasure and…

There is debate over whether Asian American students are admitted to selective colleges and universities at lower rates than white students with similar academic qualifications. However, there have been few empirical investigations of this issue, in large part due to a dearth of data. Here we present the results from analyzing 685,709 applications…

The debate over race-conscious admissions has gained prominence, notably in cases such as Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. In debates on race-conscious admissions, the question is often not whether a student will go to college, but which college the student will attend. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, we…

What do we mean when we say that a text is relevant to a young person or to a group of young people? And how might a reimagining of relevance, shaped through the voices of young men of color, enhance literacy teaching and learning? Based on case studies of six young Black, Latino, and South Asian men and their reading experiences, this book…

While little research has been conducted on Asian undocumented students in higher education, it was the powerful story of an Asian undocumented high school student, Tereza Lee, that inspired Senator Richard Durbin to co-author immigration legislation known as the 2001 DREAM Act. Tereza's story represents an important counter-story to what many…

This dissertation aims to advance our understanding of Asian American students' choices and trajectories in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, especially in math-intensive STEM sub-fields, by investigating Asian American female and male students' math-related motivational beliefs held in high school and whether/how…

Across the country, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students appear to be academically successful, completing high school at 95.9 percent (NCES, 2011). However, upon disaggregation of data, AAPI's ethnic subgroups such as Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander (SEAPI) students in Oakland, CA are dropping out at an alarming rate of 50…

School assignment in Boston and New York City came to national attention in the 1970s as courts across the country tried to integrate schools. Today, district-wide choice allows Boston and New York students to enroll far from home. Although 1970s desegregation efforts likely benefited minority students, urban school transportation is increasingly…

This brief investigates the ways in which students engaged in test prep, whether underserved learners participated in different test prep activities than their peers, and whether any of the test prep features were related to performance on the ACT.