This article provides a review of prior empirical work exploring whether and to what extent school district racial composition affects the costs associated with providing equal educational opportunity to achieve a common set of outcomes. This prior work mainly involves education cost function modeling, on several specific states and in an earlier…

Racism is enmeshed within the fabric of U.S. public education, making it critical to identify and dismantle. One way to do this is to provide professional development (PD) to teachers targeting antiracism to build awareness, decenter whiteness, and advance racial equity in schools. This systematic review is a synthesis of antiracism PD studies,…

Racism is enmeshed within the fabric of U.S. public education, making it critical to identify and dismantle. One way to do this is to provide professional development (PD) to teachers targeting anti-racism to build awareness, decenter whiteness, and advance racial equity in schools. This systematic review is a synthesis of anti-racism PD studies,…

Recent mass closings of schools have rocked cities across the United States. Though these urban closures--and widespread community protests--have made headlines, rural schools have also long experienced and opposed the closure of their schools. A large body of research examines these urban and rural closures from a variety of perspectives,…

We use novel information about fixture-specific water lead levels (WLLs) in Portland, Oregon schools to explore inequalities in students' potential for exposure to lead in drinking water at school. We find that Black and Hispanic students were in classrooms with higher WLLs than white students primarily because they attended different schools. The…

A narrative literature review was conducted to examine how researchers address the concept of White privilege in teacher education using critical race theory. A Boolean search revealed 26 articles met criteria for inclusion. Findings show most researchers (n = 15, 55%) investigated perceptions of White privilege within individual multicultural…

The authors situate the emergence and effects of contemporary market-based reforms within a framework of urban political economy that centers on racial inequality. They discuss how and why market-based reforms have evolved alongside racialized political and economic trends that have transformed cities over the past century, and they critically…

This study explores participant experiences at two contrasting high schools in a large, urban school district in crisis who implemented mandatory community-based learning (CBL) (e.g. community service, work-based internships) as a policy of reform. Rawls' theory of justice as fairness is used to examine capacity of the district formal policy to…

This article describes the importance that high school computer science teachers place on a teachers' professional learning community designed around an inquiry- and equity-oriented approach for broadening participation in computing. Using grounded theory to analyze four years of teacher surveys and interviews from the Exploring Computer Science…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the district effectiveness literature. It begins by summarizing the school effectiveness research, the correlates of effective schools, and the conceptual and methodological characteristics of this field. It then describes the findings from a review of 50 studies of district effectiveness, the most…

By using the education Gini coefficient (EGC), as the indicator of education equity, this paper will calculate the degree of education equity in China during 1978-2004. Results show that although education equity as a whole has improved significantly since 1978, it is rather at a low level compared with the international average. Due to the great…

There is perhaps no more pressing issue in school policy today than the achievement gap across social lines. Achievement differences between well-to-do children and poor children and between disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities and majority whites are large when children first begin school, and they increase over time. Despite years of study…

The central goals of federal education policy are to achieve equity of educational opportunity and proficiency in educational outcomes for all students--regardless of gender, ethnicity, income, language of origin, disability, or geography. The means to achieve these goals rely in part on the ability of states and districts to provide every student…

Reviews the history and use of educational vouchers in urban schools. Discusses their economic and social impact on the following areas: (1) public schools; (2) educational choice; (3) equal education; and (4) educational quality. Proposes alternatives. (FMW)

Examines research about home and school relations to analyze the author's experiences as a parent activist in an urban public school, using the activity of nitpicking as both a literal explanation and metaphoric representation of the ways that women's responsibilities for maintaining children's emotional and physical wellbeing interfere with the…