For decades, the achievement gap between low-income Black males and other groups is sufficiently documented and persists. This study calls for a new practical curriculum approach that provides the necessary conditions for how low-income Black males learn, stay engaged, and assist in building the capacity for positive self-efficacy. The…

Access is key to achieving an educated citizenry and maximizing human capital. It is equally important to ask "access to what?" While most of the world catches up to American higher education, the U.S. is in the midst of a shakeout of traditional residential colleges and universities. The question is not whether the status quo should be…

Purpose: Educational accountability and student achievement polarization, which result in high dropout rates, pose significant challenges and pressures on teachers' pedagogical leadership. Whether pedagogical leadership, which originates in the Western educational environment, can significantly improve student achievement in Chinese high schools…

It is widely believed that the time children spend with parents significantly impacts human capital formation. If time varies significantly between black and white children, this may help explain the large racial gap in test scores and wages. In this study, I use data from the American Time Use Survey to examine the patterns in the time black and…

The Whole Education National Network is a dynamic national not-for-profit partnership of schools and organisations that believe that all children and young people are entitled to an education that supports the development of wider skills, qualities and characteristics to enable them to thrive in life, learning and work, as well as conventional…

This paper uses a rich longitudinal dataset to measure the evolution of the gender differences in numeracy among school-age children in Indonesia. Girls outperformed boys by 0.08 standard deviations when the sample was around 11 years old. Seven years later, the gap has widened to 0.19 standard deviations, equivalent to around 18 months of…

In this paper, we study the impact of parental human capital background on ethnic educational gaps between second-generation immigrants using a large data set conducted in France in 2003. Estimates from censored random effect ordered Probit regressions show that the skills of immigrants explain in the most part, the ethnic educational gap between…

This paper investigates achievement gaps between low and high socioeconomic students in 19 high-income countries. On average, math scores of students with indicators of high socioeconomic status (SES) are over one standard deviation above those with low SES indicators. The paper estimates the extent to which these achievement gaps can be…

Since the 1990s, a growing number of urban schools have gained attention for their distinctive approach to academics and character education. These schools, most of them charters, share the stated goals of closing the racial achievement gap and preparing all of their students for college. In this article, we identify common elements of their…

American policy makers, educators, and others are concerned that predicted workforce shortages in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields will have a catastrophic impact on the economy. This article takes a realistic look at the "STEM problem," identifying how community colleges can be a part of the solution. We provide…

In this paper we analyze the role played by self-confidence, modeled as beliefs about one's ability, in shaping task choices. We propose a model in which fully rational agents exploit all the available information to update their beliefs using Bayes' rule, eventually learning their true type. We show that when the learning process does not…

Education is growing at a phenomenal pace. Inclusiveness has been accommodated by the advantages that come with ICT and its link to ODL. The human capital levels of women stand far below that of men in institutions of higher learning. Whereas women (and the youth) are bound to reap abundantly from the much compensation that ICTs and ODL have to…

Educational equity is often discussed as a moral issue. Another way to think about equity is as a way to promote productivity and economic efficiency. Traditionally, equity and efficiency are viewed as competing goals. One can be fair in devising a policy, but it often happens that what is fair is not economically efficient. Conversely, what is…

The 21st century will require knowledge and skill well beyond the basic levels of reading and arithmetic that American schools know how to produce more or less reliably. Delivering a "thinking curriculum" to all American students requires major reform in the ways schools and districts organize their work. The transformation of the…