We tested 10 data-based strategies to better identify student homelessness in Camden City School District, which has a student body from minoritized backgrounds. We operationalized strategies through a research-practice partnership, following the federal homelessness definition. Data span 5 years (2014-15 through 2018-19), including integrated…

Using cross-institutional survey data from 407 first-year college students, differences in information literacy preparation and academic library experiences between community college students and students at four-year institutions are examined. Results show that first-year community college students are more likely to be novice library users,…

Candi Mascia Reed is a retired principal of programs for deaf and hard of hearing students in the Total Communication programs of Bergen County Special Services in the Hackensack School District in New Jersey. Currently, she is an adjunct professor at The College of New Jersey, Special Education Language and Literacy, Deaf Education Teacher…

Over the past 30 years, numerous policies have focused on closing the achievement gap in the United States. Despite this emphasis on mastery and proficiency, students continue to perform below expectations. We use standardized math test performance to explore whether schools have been able to eliminate the achievement gap across middle-level…

This article considers how youth participatory action research (YPAR) can be used to build the civic teaching capacities of preservice teachers working in urban settings. In the final semester of an urban-focused teacher education program, preservice teachers led YPAR programs in the urban schools in which they student-taught the previous…

The academic achievement gap is a persistent and pernicious educational challenge confounded with race and socioeconomic status. The achievement gap persists despite over three decades of interventions and federal, state, and local policies and initiatives meant to close it. We examine the achievement gap in one of the most diverse states in the…

Discussing ideologically opposing views of beginning reading, the authors trace the politics of reading curriculum in two racially diverse New Jersey school districts working to raise the literacy achievement of traditionally underserved students through socially just literacy education.

Publicly funded pre-K is often touted as a means to narrow achievement gaps, but this goal is less likely to be achieved if poor and/or minority children do not, at a minimum, attend equal quality pre-K as their non-poor, non-minority peers. In this paper, I find large "quality gaps" in public pre-K between poor, minority students and…

By providing early access to education, early childhood and community-based programs are helping to close the achievement gap prevalent among children from impoverished homes.

Changing the culture of a large, diverse high school from a place of teaching to a place of learning requires determination and the commitment of the entire school staff. Documented academic growth for all students and reduced achievement gaps over the last five years have demonstrated that Bloomfield (New Jersey) High School has made this…

While educators and policy makers have an intuitive understanding of the influence of socioeconomic factors and race on student achievement, these factors make the current emphasis on standardized test scores as a primary criterion for evaluating schools and teachers indefensible and ineffective. The research presented illustrates the limits of…

School districts on the leading edge of the Birth through Third Grade movement have demonstrated unprecedented success raising the achievement of low-income students by developing coherent strategies focused on the early years of learning and development. These communities are not merely improving preschool. Rather, they are building aligned,…

This article describes two research studies conducted on the linguistic modification of test items from K-12 content assessments. In the first study, 120 linguistically modified test items in mathematics and science taken by fourth and sixth graders were found to have a wide range of outcomes for English language learners (ELLs) and non-ELLs, with…

The latest administration of the assessment provides state-by-state results for 12th graders for the first time. Twelfth graders' reading and mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have improved only modestly in the past four years, according to results from the latest administration, prompting renewed recognition…

American public higher education is in trouble. Besieged by declining state and Federal support for more than 30 years, public colleges and universities are facing a "game-changing" set of challenges that threaten to alter the very nature of the institutions. As two recessions withered state budgets in the first decade of the 21st…