A growing body of research and popular reporting shows racial differences in school modality choices during the COVID-19 crisis, with White students more likely to attend school in person in the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021. This in-person learning gap raises serious equity concerns. We use unique panel survey data to explore possible…

In a nationally representative sample, first-year U.S. college students "somewhat agree," on average, that they feel like they belong at their school. However, belonging varies by key institutional and student characteristics; of note, racial-ethnic minority and first-generation students report lower belonging than peers at 4-year…

Theory suggests that teachers' implicit racial attitudes affect their students, but large-scale evidence on U.S. teachers' implicit biases and their correlates is lacking. Using nationwide data from Project Implicit, we found that teachers' implicit White/Black biases (as measured by the implicit association test) vary by teacher gender and race.…

Recent trends in higher education financing have increased students' need to borrow to afford college. This brief examines how federal student loan borrowing has changed from 2000 to 2016 by student race/ethnicity using logistic regression analysis and data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). We find that the odds of…

This article examines whether exposure to the arts has an effect on the ability of students to engage in critical thinking. We conduct a randomized controlled trial involving 3,811 students who were assigned by lottery to participate in a School Visit Program at the newly opened Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Students who participated in…

The minority-serving institution (MSI) sector has grown considerably since the 1980s, yet we have less empirical information about what currently influences students to enroll in and complete college at these institutions in comparison to their non-MSI counterparts. We evaluate student postsecondary outcomes by race and ethnicity in Texas's large…

Culturally and educationally, the United States specializes in the production of kinds of persons described first by ethnic, racial, and linguistic lines and second by supposed mental abilities. Overlaps between the two systems of classification are frequent, systematically haphazard, and often deleterious. An examination of classrooms around the…

Asserts that minority group youth often manage tensions between ethnic and academic identities as they are positioned in relation to cultural practices within and outside of school. Recommends a three-strand framework to understand these emerging tensions and their management in the lives of minority youth: positioning in face-to-face…

Examines how to characterize commonalities in learning approaches of individuals from educationally underserved ethnic groups, disagreeing with the common assumption that regularities are static and individuals' general traits are attributable categorically to ethnicity. Suggests that a cultural-historical approach can help move beyond this…

Describes the development of Project Transformative Educational Achievement Model (TEAM), an instructional initiative intended to increase the numbers of diverse students at Indiana University who enter teacher education, graduate, and obtain teaching licensure in Indiana. Data from interviews, meta-comment papers, and student transcripts focus on…

Identifies two conceptual and methodological limitations to current treatments of cultural diversity in social science research: the tendency to treat race, ethnicity, culture, and social class as fixed categories and the tendency to focus on single levels of analysis. Proposes strategic guidelines for mitigating these limitations, illustrating…

Recommends the integration of cultural socialization and identity processes in learning within educational research in order to improve educational outcomes for racial/ethnic minorities and youth facing persistent intergenerational poverty. Suggests that educational researchers must understand the cultural niches in which young people develop,…

Dialog between the authors addresses multiculturalism from a critical perspective and reminds educational researchers that research is always about political representation. It is argued that researchers may have inadvertently created the populations they study because of the controlling cultural mode of their own research. (SLD)