Racial/ethnic minoritized youth are underrepresented in autism research. Documented inequities in accessibility to and utilization of autism-specific services highlight the importance of better understanding for whom and under what conditions autism evidence-based practices (EBPs) work. This report examines the race, ethnicity, sex, and gender of…

Undergraduate research offers a significant avenue for enhancing the engagement and skill development of underrepresented students, particularly those from BIPOC backgrounds. This study conducted at Penn State University aimed to illuminate the challenges faced by BIPOC students in their pursuit of undergraduate research opportunities and promote…

Teacher mobility, or teacher turnover, has long garnered attention as a critical educational equity gap. This attention is warranted as, within schools, teachers have the single greatest impact on student achievement. The unprecedented interruptions to school-based learning and the trials of navigating remote and hybrid instruction due to the…

Background/Context: Implicit bias, or stereotypes and attitudes that may or may not reflect known positions, has been implicated in teachers' disciplinary interactions with students; however not all of the differences in discipline severity by race are accounted for by teachers. School administrators have received little attention concerning…

When the phrase "Social workers cannot be racist" is used, there is not consideration of race, racism, and the detrimental effects of racism. This study includes an exploration of the extent to which social workers have been educated on racism-based trauma. Most participants did not have courses or training on the concept of racism-based…

Background: The Student Assistance Program (SAP) is mandated kindergarten to 12th grade in Pennsylvania schools to address barriers to student academic success. Following student referral, SAP teams use a systematic process to inform recommendations for school or community-based services. To evaluate program outcomes, a review of student SAP…

In the following study, displaced Puerto Rican mothers and I created and explored a learning space -- culture circles -- that engaged participants in a critical cycle of problem posing, dialogue, and problem solving in relation to their experiences in the receiving Pennsylvania community. Using a qualitative, ethnographic approach, the study drew…

The Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to identify schools with low-performing student subgroups for Targeted Support and Improvement or Additional Targeted Support and Improvement. Random differences between students' true abilities and their test scores, also called measurement error, reduce the statistical reliability of the performance…

This Snapshot highlights key findings from a study that used Bayesian stabilization to improve the reliability (long-term stability) of subgroup proficiency measures that the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) uses to identify schools for Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) or Additional Targeted Support and Improvement (ATSI). The…

The "Stabilizing Subgroup Proficiency Results to Improve the Identification of Low-Performing Schools" study used Bayesian stabilization to improve the reliability (long-term stability) of subgroup proficiency measures that the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) uses to identify schools for Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI)…

Building a strong, diverse teacher workforce in sufficient numbers requires understanding of the points along the pathway into the teaching profession where aspiring teachers are most likely lost. Currently, policymakers, state education agencies, and teacher prep programs have limited insight into the obstacles along this pathway, largely due to…

This study examined the association between having a gay or lesbian friend and urban students' attitudes about sexual minorities. Results indicate that females were more likely than males to express supportive views about gays and lesbians. The contours of these sex differences were distinct by race/ethnicity. Black males and females differed more…

One provocative explanation for the continued persistence of minority achievement gaps involves the performance-dampening anxiety thought to be experienced by minority students in highly evaluative settings (i.e., "stereotype threat"). Recent field-experimental studies suggest that modest, low-cost "buffering" interventions…