The Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum has been implemented in numerous school districts to cultivate positive behaviors and diminish inappropriate conduct and behavioral issues. Beyond enhancing students' interpersonal relationships, essential skills such as relationship-building, responsible decision-making, and empathy enable…

Schools often track students to classes based on ability. Proponents of tracking argue it is a low-cost tool to improve learning since instruction is more effective when students are more homogeneous, while opponents argue it exacerbates initial differences in opportunities without strong evidence of efficacy. In fact, little is known about the…

Background/Context: Students designated as English Learners (ELs) account for 10.4 percent of all students nationwide but have historically been provided unequal access to educational resources (Gándara et al., 2003; National Center for Education Statistics, 2023). Further, education policies are often blind to ELs' strengths and challenges,…

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are an emerging form of professional learning used nationwide as a means for educators to focus on job-embedded learning. Extensive qualitative data have been compiled regarding the perception of educators and PLCs. However, little quantitative research has been conducted regarding the academic achievement…

This Collection contains three seminal modules by Authors Ana Rojas-LeBouef and John R. Slate, professors and researchers from Sam Houston State University in Texas. They are nationally recognized scholars in the area of the academic inequity between White and Non-White students. This paper is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1--The…

Background: The overall goal of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 is to close, by the end of the 2013-2014 academic year, "the achievement gap between high- and low- performing students, especially the achievement gap between minority and non-minority students and, between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers"…