This article reviews scholarship on youth and young adult activism in digital spaces, as young users of participatory media sites are engaging in political, civic, social, or cultural action and advocacy online to create social change. The authors argue that youth's digital activism serves as a central mechanism to disrupt inequality, and that…

In this article, Tyler Denmead draws upon critical race theory to argue that the creative city discourse reproduces racial injustice for youth. In particular, the creative city invests in the property rights and profitability of whiteness by inscribing creative superiority on the bodies of young people who are more likely to be privileged by…

Reflecting on his own experiences attending integrated schools in the 1960s and 70s, scholar Pedro Noguera argues that, despite the challenges involved, school integration remains essential for providing better educational opportunities for students. At a time when our nation is becoming irreversibly more diverse, Noguera writes, the country's…

In this report, the authors explore the patterns in mathematics course-taking among California public high school seniors. They describe what courses students are enrolled in and how course participation varies by key student characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and performance level on the state's 11th grade assessments.…

The early home language environment, and parents in particular, form the foundation of children's language development. In this article, Dina Kapengut and Kimberly Noble explore the intersection of neuroscience and developmental psychology to explain how language experiences in the home, and the "home learning environment" more broadly,…

State education data systems help policymakers use data to evaluate the impact of their efforts to improve education. By disaggregating the data -- that is, breaking it out by different student subgroups -- policymakers can ensure that their efforts address the needs of students who have been traditionally underserved in educational settings. Yet…

In the past few years, four states have established programs that provide public financial support to students who choose to attend a private school. These programs--a tax-credit-funded scholarship initiative in Florida and voucher programs in Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio--offer a glimpse of what expansive statewide choice might look like. What…

In 2015, the Annie E. Casey Foundation partnered with the Corporation for National and Community Service's Social Innovation Fund to launch Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential (LEAP), a multimillion-dollar initiative to increase employment and educational opportunities for young people ages 15-25 who have been involved in the child welfare and…

This article explores whether child-led research (CLR) benefits the well-being of the children and young people involved. The article draws upon evaluation data from a pilot CLR programme facilitated by a non-government organisation that supports disadvantaged children, young people and families. Nine participants (aged 10-14 years old)…

The federal role in higher education has grown over the past two decades, and now a new administration has the opportunity to strengthen policies that support students and their colleges and universities. To help inform these decisions, the Urban Institute convened a bipartisan group of scholars and policy advisers to write a series of memos…

'Narrowing the gap' and addressing low educational achievement of specific social class and ethnic groups has long been an expressed government concern. This paper considers the links between poverty, ethnicity and gender and school attainment and the interrelations of these factors using national data sets and other quantitative data. The…

It has long been recognised that schools serving disadvantaged communities are more likely to be staffed by teachers without qualified teacher status, with fewer years of experience and by non-specialist science and maths teachers. Inequality in access to suitably qualified, high quality teachers is likely to be an important contributor to the…

This article argues for the importance of studying the moral meanings that young people attach to their aspirations and plans for the future. Drawing on semi-structured interview data with 29 young people from a sixth-form college in a disadvantaged area of East London, I show that aspirations are closely connected to the formation of individual…

In the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-2009, youth unemployment in the United States reached its highest level since the Second World War. Only about half of young people ages 16 to 24 held jobs in 2013, and recent estimates suggest that about one in five people in this age range were neither working nor in school. This paper draws from…

In times of growing economic inequality, improving equity in education becomes more urgent. While some countries and economies that participate in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have managed to build education systems where socio-economic status makes less of a difference to students' learning and well-being, every…