Attract, Inspire, Mentor and Support Students (AIMS[superscript 2]), a grant-funded program from the U.S. Department of Education for the HSI-STEM and Articulation Programs, focuses on improving outcomes for Hispanic and low-income students in STEM. Using a quasi-experimental design (QED) approach, this study examined outcomes between students who…

Employing a mixed methods approach, this study examined the reading motivations of dual language learners (DLLs) in Grades 3-5 in a suburban Title I school in which the student population was predominantly Hispanic. Twenty-one students completed self-report surveys and participated in interviews focused on two intrinsic motivations (involvement…

Without a better understanding of what contributes to racial/ethnic and gender underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, many U.S. citizens likely will not be able to take full advantage of the socioeconomic affordances of STEM occupations. Additionally, the increasingly diverse nation will have a STEM…

Few published studies have examined the interaction between community violence exposure, academic engagement, and parental involvement, despite theory suggesting that these three domains of development are interrelated during adolescence. This study had two related objectives: (a) to assess the temporal ordering of the relation between community…

Is under-representation of Black, Latinx, English learners (EL), and students from economically challenging communities in gifted programs due to inequality in early academic achievement or bias in the gifted identification process? Using three-level multilevel logistic models, we examine the degree to which the disparities in gifted…

Undergraduates' distress has increased dramatically since the COVID-19 pandemic's onset, raising concerns for academic achievement. Yet little is known about the mechanisms by which pandemic-related distress may affect students' learning and performance, and consequently, how we might intervene to promote student achievement despite the continuing…

The present study examined whether teacher-child closeness and conflict across kindergarten and first grade varied by gender and disruptive behavior at kindergarten entry within a sample of 324 predominantly Black children from low-income, urban households. Three main findings emerged from the analyses. First, contrary to findings from previous…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on education systems in the U.S, prompting a variety of changes to school learning environments. This study investigates student/family choices of learning modality in one large school district in the U.S and examines how these choices differ by students' race/ethnicity and performance level. Results…

Using a nationally representative sample of 3- and 4-year-old Spanish-speaking dual language learners (DLLs) attending Head Start (N = 654), this study examined whether mean levels of and variability in peers' English receptive vocabulary skills were associated with DLLs' English and Spanish receptive vocabulary skills in the spring. In addition,…

Student-teacher relationships are important to student outcomes and may be especially pivotal at the high school transition and for minoritized racial/ethnic groups. Although interventions exist to improve student-teacher relationships, none have been shown to be effective among high school students or in narrowing racial/ethnic disparities in…

Over the past decade, U.S. immigration enforcement policies have increasingly targeted unauthorized immigrants residing in the U.S. interior, many of whom are the parents of U.S.-citizen children. Heightened immigration enforcement may affect student achievement through stress, income effects, or student mobility. I use one immigration enforcement…

To better understand underrepresented undergraduates' motivation for pursuing their major, we examined undergraduates' articulated explanations for their major choice and its association with their motivational beliefs within an introductory chemistry course. Students' (n=503, 68% female, 56% First-Generation College-Going, 34% Hispanic)…

Camden City School District is committed to identifying and serving students experiencing homelessness to ensure they receive a free, appropriate public education. It considers data from students enrolled in district schools at the conclusion of each of the 2014-15 to 2018-19 school years as well as publicly available data from other local…

Given the growing number of Latino English learners and the lack of evidence-based educational opportunities they are provided, we investigated the impact of one potentially effective literacy intervention that targets struggling first-grade Spanish-speaking students: Descubriendo La Lectura (DLL). DLL provides first-grade Spanish-speaking…

Purpose: Explore how different automated scoring (AS) models score reliably the expressive language and vocabulary knowledge in depth of young second grade Latino English learners. Design/methodology/approach: Analyze a total of 13,471 English utterances from 217 Latino English learners with random forest, end-to-end memory networks, long…