For students entering Grade 9 in the 2014-15 school year and later, Texas modified its public high school graduation requirements by enacting House Bill 5 (HB 5) during the 83rd Texas Legislature. These changes provided students with greater flexibility in the courses required for graduation (including eliminating Algebra II as a required course)…

"Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) officially ended legal (de jure) segregation, but desegregation outcomes overall fell short of this nation's ideals of equality and justice. As a result, children of color suffer. The purpose of this study was as follows: 1) To measure school segregation by race and ethnicity in Texas, and 2) To…

"Changing Course: Public School Enrollment Shifts During the Pandemic" is an analysis of student enrollment trends in public schools during the pandemic (2019-20 to 2021-22 school years). The numbers showed more than 240,000 students enrolled in charter schools, a 7% increase--while district public schools lost approximately 1.5 million…

In this article, industry-based certification attainment rates were compared by student ethnicity/race as reported by the Texas Education Agency for the 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school years. Through analyses of Texas statewide data, statistically significant differences were revealed in industry-based certification attainment rates…

This critical ethnography utilizes critical policy analysis and a theoretical understanding of neoliberal racism to examine the practiced reality of school choice in a public, under-resourced, and historically underperforming neighborhood elementary school attended predominantly by Latina/o/x students. Despite improvement initiatives that resulted…

The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of Hispanic Unaccompanied Homeless Youth (HUHY) enrolled in public high school in Texas. Homeless students face unique living challenges. However, homeless students have proven abilities critical for their academic pursuits. The study results showed homeless students are resilient and…

Background/Context: There were over 500,000 open computing jobs across the country in 2018, but only 35% of U.S. high schools offer computer science classes, and only 8-10% of STEM graduates study computer science (Code.org, 2018). In 2021, only 5.1% of all Bachelor's degrees conferred were in Computer and Information Sciences (IPEDS, 2018). STEM…

Each year, over a thousand public schools in the US close due to declining enrollments and chronic low performance, displacing hundreds of thousands of students. Using Texas administrative data and empirical strategies that use within-student across-time and within-school across-cohort variation, I explore the impact of school closures on…

Low levels of teacher diversity in U.S. elementary and secondary schools represent a wasted opportunity to narrow achievement gaps. Evidence from other states suggests that students of color have better outcomes in the classrooms of teachers of color, but the teaching workforce remains predominantly white. Teachers of color are underrepresented at…

The purpose of this study was to compare reading scores of students and school systems using the Trilingual process (public charter district) to students and school systems using the Dual Language, Bilingual, and ESL process (public school district). Participants were low socioeconomic status Grade 3 Hispanic/Latinx students. Focused in this…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine whether English as a Second Language (ESL) Hispanic students, attendance at Title I or Non-Title I schools, and percentage of Bilingual/ESL teachers on campus impacted academic performance as measured by standardized tests. With a rapidly expanding Hispanic population in Texas, it was prudent…

This study shares the results of a five-year effort to implement a school turnaround model facilitated through an unprecedented university-public school partnership. The high needs Hispanic majority demographic makeup of the public-school district amplifies the importance of this work.

In the past 20 years, both school choice policies and dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs have proliferated across the US. This project examines the intersection of the two trends, examining how school choice policies have shaped DLBE at the district, school, and program level, through the eyes of 22 public school administrators in…

This study snapshot presents the key findings from the full study conducted in response to concerns raised by Texas higher education stakeholders about the limited information available on college outcomes among students with a disability. While most colleges provide services and accommodations for students with self-identified disabilities, many…

The present study examined relations between Theory of Mind (ToM) understanding and social competence among school-age Latino children. Participants included 62 children ages 6-12 years. Picture vocabulary was assessed via a standardized language survey, and ToM assessed via Happé's [(1994). An advanced test of theory of mind: Understanding of…