The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented educational disruption in institutions throughout the United States and the world. Research shows that such disruptions have a disproportionately negative impact on ethnic minorities. Researchers at a federally designated Minority- and Hispanic-serving four-year university deployed the Achievement…

There is growing evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic had a large and negative impact on student learning. This dissertation explores the effect of the pandemic on one of the most vulnerable student subgroups: English Learners (ELs). In this work I examine existing disparities among subgroups of ELs, and the different ways the pandemic has impacted…

Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the impact of COVID-19 on university students' academic performance. Participants: Our sample consisted of students 18 years old and above enrolled at least part-time during the Spring 2020 semester. Methods: This cross-sectional survey examined the individual, social, and economic impacts of…

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe effective constructivism teaching strategies and approaches for reducing the achievement gap between minority and non-minority students in a middle school gifted program at Stoneybrook Middle School in the Downey-Raine School System through an examination of the lived…

Higher education institutions' success relies on student retention and graduation rates, especially among underrepresented minority (URM) groups, where persistent disparities exist. This dissertation focuses on URM Division I student-athletes, often overlooked despite their significant influence within universities. Notably, academic success gaps…

As COVID-19 upended the lives of students around the state, schools across Wisconsin saw a troubling increase in chronic absences. This report discusses where chronic absenteeism grew more sharply in Wisconsin. The highest rates of absenteeism occurred in schools with greater numbers of students of color and from low-income households, thus posing…

The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has affected people in multiple dimensions. In addition to the social, physical health, financial, and mental health impacts of the pandemic, many United States (U.S.) college students experienced an abrupt transition to online learning in Spring 2020, resulting in a significant disruption to their…

The negative impact of COVID-19 on students persists three years after the onset of the pandemic. A substantial body of research shows that students have yet to recover to their learning trends before the pandemic (Callen et al. 2023, Lewis & Kuhfeld 2023, Cohodes et al., 2022). This suggests that students face a lengthy road to recovery, and…

Objective: To assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on daily living, mental well-being, and experiences of racial discrimination among college students from communities of color. Participants: Sample comprised 193 ethnically diverse college students, aged 18 to 25 years (M = 20.5 years), who were participating in virtual internships due to…

In this report, RAND researchers investigate one specific issue that may contaminate utilization of COVID-19--era school-aggregate scores and result in faulty comparisons with historical and other proximal aggregate scores: changes in school composition over time. To investigate this issue, they examine data from NWEA's Measures of Academic…

School officials regularly use school-aggregate test scores to monitor school performance and make policy decisions. After the U.S. Department of Education offered assessment waivers to all 50 states in 2019-2020, many educators and policymakers advocated for assessment programs to be restarted in the 2020-2021 school year to evaluate the state of…

The Navajo Nation has been historically underserved, as evidenced by the prevalence of education inequity, inadequacies in healthcare facilities and personnel, and limited capacity of telecommunications and electrical infrastructure. These vulnerabilities of the Navajo Nation were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This qualitative…

Reflections on pandemic schooling and its aftermath have been dominated by narratives of loss. Most notably, there has been sustained attention given to students' loss of learning and loss of social skills (with implications that this will lead to loss of revenue and a lost generation down the road). This neoliberal view of schooling, which is…

As required in 105 ILCS 5/2-3.47a, the Illinois State Board of Education shall develop and maintain a continuing comprehensive strategic plan for elementary and secondary education. The 2020-2023 Strategic Plan consists of goals for equity, student learning, learning conditions, and elevating educators. The Strategic Plan leverages the wide range…

The COVID-19 pandemic and shift to remote instruction disrupted students' learning and well-being. This study explored undergraduates' incoming course concerns and later perceived challenges in an introductory statistics course. We explored how the frequency of concerns changed with the onset of COVID-19 (N=1417) and, during COVID-19, how incoming…