This study was designed to explore the unique perspectives of African-American male principals serving in rural high-poverty, high-minority elementary schools regarding the residual effects of the North Carolina School Performance Grade Accountability Model and the perceived role that race plays in their recruitment, placement, and retention at…

This brief draws on a 2019 study of high-poverty schools in North Carolina conducted in support of the state's efforts to comply with the North Carolina Supreme Court's decision in "Leandro v. the State of North Carolina." The study found that high-poverty schools provide inadequate and unequal educational resources and opportunities to…

Whether students of color are more or less likely to be identified as having disabilities than similarly situated students who are White in U.S. states with histories of de jure and de facto racial segregation is currently unknown. Unadjusted analyses of large samples of students attending elementary and middle schools in the U.S. South yielded…

This article explores the many ways in which states can and are addressing racial equity in problem solving and policymaking. The authors explore national data that make the case for addressing bias and advancing equity in state policy; share strategies and best practices for engaging families and communities; and provide examples of policies that…

This brief summarizes a 2019 study of educator supply, demand, and quality in North Carolina conducted by the Learning Policy Institute in collaboration with the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina and WestEd. That study supported the state's ongoing efforts to meet the standard set in the North Carolina Supreme Court's decision in…

We use longitudinal data from North Carolina and Washington to study the extent to which four processes--teacher attrition from each state workforce, teacher mobility within districts, teacher mobility across districts, and teacher hiring--contribute to "teacher quality gaps" (TQGs) between advantaged and disadvantaged schools. We first…

The purpose of this slide deck is to shine a spotlight on education in the American South with a focus on equity and to provide an understanding of the historical, social, political, and economic context in which the education sector operates. Any movement serious about improving education and life outcomes for underserved student groups --…

Background: Schools are important sites for interventions to prevent childhood obesity. This study examines how variables measuring the socioeconomic and racial composition of schools and counties affect the likelihood of obesity among third to fifth grade children. Methods: Body mass index data were collected from third to fifth grade public…

This study was conducted to compare two elementary schools to determine what strategies were being used to cause a significant difference in the scores between the two schools. One school is a high poverty, high minority, high growth school while the other school is a high poverty, high minority, low performing school within the same rural school…

The majority of Southern states performed below the national average and the average of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries in terms of the percent of young adults in 2015 who attained an associate degree or higher. This regional profile presents a synthesis of trends in the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB)…

To inform the "Leandro v. State of North Carolina" Action Plan, the Learning Policy Institute examined the within-school and out-of-school barriers to obtaining a sound basic education facing students who attend North Carolina's high-poverty schools. High-poverty schools are schools where 75% or more students are at risk because their…

Rural schools, have the hardest time retaining qualified teachers. As a result, under-qualified teachers or those with emergency licenses work disproportionately in high-poverty and urban schools (U.S. Department of Education, 1998) Students in high-poverty schools are less likely to be taught by a qualified teacher (Ingersoll, 1999); they may be…

Improving teaching effectiveness is a hot topic for policymakers around the country these days. The gathering movement marks an important step forward in the ongoing effort to strengthen our nation's schools. In many cases, however, these efforts start and stop with improving outdated, inadequate teacher evaluation systems. Such approaches fail to…

This report misrepresents and then criticizes recommendations from the Minnesota Department of Education, a think tank and two independent study groups, each of which recently encouraged particular voluntary efforts to reduce concentrated poverty and achieve racial and socioeconomic integration in schools and housing in Minnesota. In building its…

Substantial research supports the need for early intervention efforts for students at risk for failure. Despite the empirically documented importance of early, explicit reading intervention for students who enter school without critical prereading skills, many kindergarten programs delay intensive reading instruction until later in the year.…