Background/Context: Underprepared students at community colleges are often assigned to a sequence of developmental education courses that can substantially delay, or even halt, their progress to degree completion. In 2014, Florida implemented a comprehensive reform under Senate Bill (SB) 1720 that allowed the majority of incoming students to…

Between 1994 and 2014, New York City engaged in a historic overhaul of its publicly funded high schools. This included the opening of charter high schools (made possible by a 1999 state law) and the creation of new, smaller district high schools that would, in time, replace many of the city's large, traditional, comprehensive, and vocational high…

A college credential can expand the range of career opportunities available to young adults. However, existing barriers to enrollment for prospective students pose equity gaps in college access and success, particularly for Black college aspirants. In Florida, racial and ethnic disparities in college enrollment contribute to disparities in…

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Indiana's college completion rates mostly held steady and even improved overall for the class of 2020. This 2021 College Completion Report will show: (1) How Indiana's college graduates are faring at completing their schooling on time (within two years for a long-term certificate or associate degree or four…

We draw on novel district-level test score data to describe novel approaches for measuring ethnoracial achievement gaps and assessing trends toward achievement equity from 2009 to 2016. Using SEDA data, we estimate gap trends for each grade over time in each district. We measure trends in both within-district gaps--comparing Black or Hispanic to…

The education system is responsible for the choices and chances provided to the students it serves. Although racial disparities continue to impede some students' chance of success in education, service-learning in the classroom context may be the transformative strategy needed to make institutions of higher education the "great…

There are 339 schools in Texas that are struggling, defined as "improvement required" by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) (txschools.gov, 2018) and received a "F" rating due to low academic performance. This designation is earned through a formula that measures general student achievement, school progress based on a comparison…

Research suggests that L2 students (English-language learners) do not access postsecondary education as the same level as L1 (native English-speaking) peers. Using a computational linguistics approach, this study analyzes financial aid application instructions from 341 randomly selected four-year, Title IV-participating U.S. institutions. Results…

Community colleges have made great strides in advancing student success and completion during the last decade. But not all students have benefited from these efforts equally. According to the Lumina Foundation, the postsecondary attainment rate for adults in the United States is around 40 percent. Yet, there are still large gaps in attainment…

In 2015, the Minnesota Legislature enacted a state postsecondary educational attainment goal: 70 percent of Minnesota adults (age 25 to 44) will have attained a postsecondary certificate or degree by 2025 ("Minnesota Laws 2015 Chapter 69, Article 3, Section 6"). The law also sets 70 percent attainment goals for all races/ethnicities. To…

The role the Oklahoma state system of higher education plays in meeting the state's workforce development goals has never been more vital. Public colleges and universities educate the state's teachers, nurses, doctors, and engineers. Graduates drive innovation, build companies, enrich communities, and strengthen the state's workforce in an…

In September 2015, when the College Board released its average SAT scores for the 2015 graduating class, two details stood out for many educators: (1) the record participation and diversity numbers (close to 1.7 million students took the test, with 50 percent being students of color); and (2) the test's lower average scores compared with previous…

Sylvia Wynter's wide-ranging intellectual contributions contain a poetics of being and becoming human that serve to counter the hegemony of developmental psychology and its articulation of the child in teacher education. In this article, I use Wynter's insights to unsettle the universality of this child figure to reveal the child of Man, a…

What if disadvantage need not correlate with poor academic achievement? If instead of researching the 'underachieving' groups (minorities, children for whom English is not their home language, and children of families in poor socioeconomic circumstances) you look at what works in schools to raise the attainment of all these groups, the results are…

"Breaking Barriers" shows how to redesign high schools so that all students can move on to college and successful careers. In a negation of the American Dream, a child's zip code is currently a far better predictor of success than hard work, intelligence, or resilience. This book tells the story of a school model that focuses on equity…