The authors sought to identify the prevalence of food insecurity in a community college district during the COVID-19 pandemic. The team also investigated the association food insecurity had with academic performance. A sample of 238 individuals completed the survey, including a demographic questionnaire and the Adult Food Security Survey Module, a…

Learning communities for college students have been shown to improve first-year student outcomes and narrow equity gaps, but longer-term data to evaluate whether these benefits persist through multi-year retention and graduation are rare. This is especially important for students in science, technology, engineering and math, who often confront…

Background: In the US, bioscience programs now often have more women than men who earn degrees at all levels. Despite this, evidence still exists for gender inequity in bioscience and medical fields. For example, women with careers in these fields tend to get paid less and leave these fields more. Here, we present research investigating grade…

In response to widening achievement gaps and increased demand for post-secondary education, local and federal governments across the US have enacted policies that have boosted high school graduation rates without an equivalent rise in student achievement, suggesting a decline in academic standards. To the extent that academic standards can shape…

In seeking to close equity gaps within a first-year student seminar course, course designers leveraged emerging research on intrapersonal competency cultivation, known to significantly predict student success across diverse students (NAS, 2018). After re-designing the course to intentionally cultivate specific intrapersonal competencies,…

The impact of admissions process design on the racial diversity of schools and colleges has sparked heated debates. We study the pipeline into Boston's three public exam schools to understand racial gaps in enrollment. Admission to these schools has historically been based on a combination of grade point average (GPA) and a score on an optional…

The increase in online learning brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic will likely result in a greater availability of online and hybrid course offerings. In this study, students enrolled in parallel sections of a microbiology lab course with in-person labs and either face-to-face (F2F) or all-online lectures (hybrid, H). Course material and method…

The gender and ethnicity attainment gap among undergraduate students in UK higher education is well documented. However, there is very little research examining the international attainment gap despite many universities acknowledging that international students achieve lower grades than home students. Furthermore, evidence for international…

Despite the existent gender parity in undergraduate biology degree attainment, gendered differences in outcomes are prevalent in introductory biology courses. Less is known about whether these disparities persist at the upper-division level, after most attrition is assumed to have occurred. Here, we report the consistent presence of gender equity…

This article provides a partial observation of a multi-tiered academic retention program with leadership and mentoring components aimed at providing academic and social support for high-achieving undergraduate students of color at a predominantly White university. As postsecondary institutions are faced with sustaining students, the development,…

Parental involvement in school is an undoubtedly important element of a student's educational experience and outcomes. Students with elevated emotional and behavioral risks (EBR) tend to experience poor educational outcomes, and research suggests varying levels of parental involvement across domains for these at-risk students. However, there is…

The transition to remote education during the COVID-19 pandemic is feared to have widened the achievement gap previously experienced by students from low socioeconomic and minority backgrounds. We utilized data from the "COVID-19 Texas College Student Experiences Survey" to assess the impact of the pandemic on Latinx students' (n = 231)…

We examine GPA and timely graduation among Native Hawaiian (NH) students using a unique dataset of bachelor degree recipients from the University of Hawai'i. Our findings indicate that NHs have lower average GPA at graduation and the differences persist across the entire distribution of GPA. More troubling were the larger differences in GPA…

Background: Private schools have a big part in the educational landscape in the United States, both in terms of the number of students they educate and in the number of resources they command. That said, despite expectations to increase equity and access to opportunity for all students, little is known about racial, gender, or socioeconomic…

This study examined data from the Institute of Education Sciences' evaluation of school-based mentoring (SBM) programs to establish a causal relationship between SBM and reduction of the academic achievement gap between African American and White middle school students. Participation in SBM improved the academic performance of all students. The…