In the Fall of 2003, the Office of Human Relations Programs (OHRP), the campus-wide equity compliance and diversity education arm of the Office of the President at the University of Maryland, College Park, created, developed, and began implementation of the three-year "Social Justice from Classroom to Community" (SJCC) project through…

The contradiction between equity and efficiency is an important issue common to the development of higher education worldwide as well as a problem that many thinkers, politicians, pedagogues, sociologists, and economists, both past and present and in China and abroad attempted to solve. There is an abundance of expositions on equity and efficiency…

This research report examines the comparative educational condition of Latinos in the United States. The report discusses the dramatic shortfalls that plague the educational outcomes of Latinos relative to other racial and ethnic groups. The outcomes studied include educational attainment, school and university enrollment, basic cognitive skills,…

America's secondary schools are failing far too many of their students. Policymakers and members of the education community generally agree that the problems in America's high schools have reached crisis proportions in recent years. Transforming schools and educating all students well requires thoughtful, coordinated, systemic change. To ensure…

This paper presents the annual report of the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) for 2008. Eighteen months ago, the National Math and Science Initiative did not exist. Today NMSI is helping lead the country forward in math and science. In just 18 months, NMSI has rolled out the first round of grants and has implemented programs in 14…

In the past decade, increasing attention has been paid to the issue of gender equity in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The research for this report, led by Yasmin Kafai and a team of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, was guided by several overarching questions: (1) What types of…

In a "Stanford Law Review" article, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) law professor Richard Sander claimed to statistically prove that affirmative action at American law schools actually depressed the number of African Americans who become lawyers by "mismatching" them at schools where they were in over their heads academically. This…

Since the publication of the highly influential "Coleman Report" of 1966, researchers have tried to find inputs, such as school quality, that are associated with student achievement on standardized tests, but have found little. This study finds an underlying association between Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and several measures of…

This paper describes the college admission process through the conceptual lens of Dickason's (2001) phases of affirmative action. The first phase, obligatory affirmative action, describes the history of affirmative action and the impact on college admission. The second phase, voluntary affirmative action, describes University of West Florida's…

This article compares the campus environmental perceptions of African-American and White students enrolled in an equal opportunity program on predominantly White campuses. These are students who are trying to overcome socioeconomic and academic challenges in their quest to become college graduates. The survey instrument measured marginality and…

Recent concerns about "fairness" in university entrance have highlighted the need to review existing practices in admissions processes. The agendas for equity and social inclusion, however, must also apply to the processes and outcomes of higher education, where considerations of "standards" are additionally crucial. As…

In exploring the relationship between cultural capital, symbolic violence and the diversification of the curriculum the notion of commoditization of race in higher education is developed. The term first and foremost emphasizes how students from "disadvantaged" racialized communities remain significantly underrepresented at selective…

As accrediting associations and ISLLC Standards for School Leaders attest, school leaders have a critical role to insure equitable educational opportunities for diverse students. But how are they being prepared for multicultural leadership in administrator preparation programs? This qualitative study examined and contrasted four different…

Sandra Day O'Connor seems to have given us the next 25 years to reach a resolution to the racial gap in education--a problem on which we've made little headway in the last 25. Nathan Glazer is not sanguine that we'll fnd that answer, but he's prepared to live with the messy but, to him, satisfactory scheme of affirmative action that Justice…

This article focuses on the government's higher education policy trajectory during the post apartheid period. The central argument of the article is that government policy ought to be examined in the light of a struggle over aligning the higher education policy discourse with the government's chosen macro development path. Policy activity has to…