At one Title I K-4 elementary campus located on the Gulf Coast of Southeast Texas, there seemed to be a prevalent problem of minority students, particularly male students, receiving office referrals at a higher rate than their non-minority counterparts in past years. Research from a 2010 Children's Defense Fund report indicates that…

This qualitative study examined the everyday mathematical experiences and understandings of three, 4-year-old, African-American children from working-class backgrounds. The study drew on Street, Baker, and Tomlin's (2005) broad, ideological model of mathematics as "social" and their analytic concepts of mathematical events (units of…

A self-report assessment scale of school connectedness was validated in this study based on the data from middle-school children in a northeastern state of the United States (n = 145). The scale was based on the School Bonding Model (Morita, 1991), which was derived reductively from the social control (bond) theory (Hirschi, 1969). This validation…

This content analysis study examined 99 basal reading narratives from three publishers: Harcourt, SRA-McGraw Hill, and Scott Foresman. The stories were classified according to the ethnicity of the major characters. The observed frequencies were compared to expected frequencies to indicate over representation, adequate representation or under…

What explains the persistent disparate enrollment of black students in gifted and talented education programs? The bulk of the literature attributes these enrollment patterns to teacher bias against black students, a lack of knowledge about how giftedness manifests itself in black youth, and the apathy of black parents in the identification…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how families influence the career education and career awareness of African American students in grades K-3. Existing literature indicated that scholars have focused their attention on the career education of college level students and counselors working with students in high schools; however, research…

African American students are underperforming in public education. Unfortunately, a lack of literacy achievement is at the forefront of this issue. Within the area of literacy, writing scores of African American children are plummeting across the nation on standardized assessments. The present study was designed to inform classroom practices about…

A number of factors seem to contribute to low student achievement in the organization of education. Some of these factors exist prior to children reaching school age. It seems as though a vast quantity of minority students struggle academically. Research supports the belief that socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and single-parent families have an…

The need to close the educational gap between Black and White students necessitated a search for answers through parental strategies that impact school readiness. Educational and child development literature support the fact that what a caregiver/parent does and/or does not do for their children, essentially, beginning at birth , has an impact on…

"Educational personnel" serve as an important conduit for family involvement in child protective services (CPS). Educational personnel are the largest source of reports of suspected child maltreatment in the United States (United States Department of Health and Human Services, 2007). However, reports made by educational personnel are…

In the United States, a growing disparity exists between the racial composition of teachers and the students they teach. In 2006, 43.1% of K-12 public school students were reported as non-White--in 1990, 32.4% (U.S. Department of Education, 2008). Teachers, however, are predominantly White, 83.3% (U.S. Department of Education, 2007a). Exacerbating…

The purpose of this study was to understand how culturally relevant pedagogy promotes academic success among low-income African American children. The characteristics and instructional practices of four elementary school teachers, defined as culturally responsive by their school administrators, were examined. The study explored how personal…

Using data collected from surveys completed by grandparents for their grandchildren (N = 72), this quantitative study examines the effects grandparent primary caregivers have on the reading achievement of their African American grandchildren. The study sought to answer the following question: How do the six types of parental involvement (Epstein,…

This is a qualitative study of identities constructed and enacted by four 3rd-grade African American children (two girls and two boys) in an urban classroom that engaged in a year-long, integrated science-literacy project. Juxtaposing narrative and discursive identity lenses, coupled with race and gender perspectives, I examined the ways in which…

There is considerable debate about the relative importance of family versus school factors in producing academic and nonacademic student outcomes, and whether and how their impacts vary across different student groups. In addition to critically reviewing and synthesizing earlier work, this study extends the literature by (a) using the ECLS-K, a…