Over the past twenty years, elite colleges and universities enacted policies that reshaped the racial and class composition of their campuses, and over the past decade, Latinos' college attendance notably increased. While discussions on educational mobility often focus on its perceived benefits -- that it will ultimately lead to social and…

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…

This report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) presents results from the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in mathematics. Representative samples of between 1,800 and 4,300 fourth- and eighth-grade public school students from 18 urban districts participated in the 2009 assessment. Eleven of the districts also…

This study examines tracking--the practice of grouping students into separate classes or courses based on their prior academic achievement--at the middle-school level, and the percentage of high-achieving students in tracked and untracked schools. It focuses on Massachusetts, a leader in "reforming" tracking, and the changes that have…

This report presents trial school-district-level results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics 2003, 2005, and 2007 assessments at grades 4 and 8 for 10 urban public-school districts: Atlanta City School District; Austin Independent School District (ISD); Boston School District; Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools; City…

This publication contains summaries of six papers presented at a conference on community and policy strategies for Latinos in Massachusetts. Each summary follows an executive summary format by briefly describing the project or argument and highlighting and summarizing major findings or recommendations. The papers are as follows: (1) "An…

The Latino population is the largest racial and ethnic minority group in Massachusetts. In the 1980s, the poverty rate of Latinos in the state was twice that of Blacks and six times that of Whites. With Latino children dropping out of school at a rate three times that of white children, the economic future of this population is bleak. The…

This report provides data on the academic achievement gap that separates low-income and minority students from other students, examining how well different groups of students perform in Massachusetts and noting inequities in teacher quality, course offerings, and funding. Included are tables and data that provide: a frontier gap analysis (a…

This report compares Massachusetts's reading and mathematics performance on the most recent administrations of the state assessment with performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). To indicate how Massachusetts is doing in narrowing the academic achievement gap between African American, Latino, or low-income students and…