Background or Context: Dual language education aims to foster the development of bilingualism, biliteracy, sociocultural competence, and academic skills in all school subjects. Early correlational research suggests that participation in dual language education is associated with higher achievement. Recent studies leveraged more comprehensive sets…

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…

Background: As COVID-19 has spread around the world, "how and where students learn" has dramatically changed. Approximately 90% of the U.S schools shifted into virtual learning in April 2020. For the 2020-2021 school year, school districts in the U.S were given the autonomy to decide how they would educate their students. While many…

Black and Latinx youth are situated in a maladaptive discriminatory context in the United States; however, prosociality may be one way that youth can promote their own positive development in the face of these experiences. We examined the longitudinal associations between discrimination and prosociality among 380 Black and Latinx early adolescents…

This study compared the academic performance of seventh-grade students on a state-mandated social studies accountability test by the instructional time configuration used and explored the relationship among the variables of gender, race and poverty on this performance. Results of 24,919 seventh-grade student social studies test scores from 117…

Ethnoracial inequality in educational achievement and attainment is a long-standing feature of the American education system. For example, national reading assessments show that White fourth graders scored nearly a standard deviation higher than Black or Hispanic students on average in 2015 (NCES, 2015). The measurement and analysis of differences…

We draw on novel district-level test score data to describe novel approaches for measuring ethnoracial achievement gaps and assessing trends toward achievement equity from 2009 to 2016. Using SEDA data, we estimate gap trends for each grade over time in each district. We measure trends in both within-district gaps--comparing Black or Hispanic to…

Many Latino students miss opportunities to develop their full potential in U.S. schools. Increasing attention is being paid to the malleable, nonacademic, factors that can affect student learning. The current study sought to evaluate the impact of school climate on Language Arts grade for Latino students in a large, low-income, urban middle…

Two decades ago, the New Jersey Supreme Court in "Abbott v. Burke" mandated that the state establish high quality preschool education in the 31 highest-poverty school districts. New Jersey created a pre-K program with high standards and a continuous improvement system that transformed a patchwork of private and public programs into a…

Some assert that middle school should be the stage in an individual's educational trajectory where they begin to make plans for the future. For many young men of color, middle school becomes a stage where they begin to get off track academically. This is the story of Escobar Cruz, a young Latino male student, and his navigation through the 7th…

A growing body of research has indicated the importance of motivation and engagement in predicting academic achievement, particularly among Latino/a adolescents. The present study examined the role of cognitive and emotional engagement in a sample of Latino/a and European American junior high school students. Results indicated that while grades…

Test-score data show that both low-income and racial-minority children score lower, on average, on states' elementary-school accountability tests compared with higher-income children or white children. This report explores the relationship between racial and socioeconomic test-score gaps in New England metropolitan areas and two factors associated…

The National Summer Learning Project (NSLP) examined the implementation and effectiveness of voluntary summer learning programs developed by five school districts--Boston, Massachusetts; Dallas, Texas; Duval County, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Rochester, New York--and their local community partners. The study spanned three phases. The…

We examined 482,418 students who took the ACT in the seventh grade and again in high school, taking an exploratory analytic approach to examine academic growth trends from 1996 to 2017. Predictors included sociodemographics, interests, high school (HS) characteristics, HS coursework and GPA, and extracurriculars, which explained 25% of the…

Texas has one of the highest populations of English Language Learners (ELLs) in the country, with a complex system for ELL identification, program placement, and high-stakes assessment. Spanish-speaking Latino ELLs represent a large proportion of this population in the state of Texas. The long-term academic achievement of ELLs identified in…