Pacific students in New Zealand (NZ) quickly learn that they are not very smart. The statistics tell them this. They also come to believe that they do not try very hard. The talk of equal opportunities tells them this, especially when it is coupled with negative statistics. This is not surprising. Education in NZ has been embedded in notions of…

This chapter examines the factors that contribute to a sense of school belonging for immigrant and immigrant-origin youth. Through a review of the education research on critical care, the authors propose a framework informed by "cariño conscientizado"--critically conscious and authentic care--as central to reconceptualizing notions of…

Developing a high level of efficacy can be challenging to teachers who work with low-achieving students. The authors adopted a pragmatic qualitative research design to investigate the sources of efficacy information reported by five high-efficacy teachers and four low-efficacy teachers of secondary low-achieving students in Singapore. The results…

If there is one thing that describes the trajectory of American education, it is this: more high-stakes testing. In the United States, the debates surrounding this trajectory can be so fierce that it feels like we are in uncharted waters. As Christopher Bjork reminds us in this study, however, we are not the first to make testing so central to…

Gender equality is not just about economic empowerment. It is a moral imperative, it is about fairness and equity, and includes many political, social and cultural dimensions. Gender equality, however, is also a key factor in self-reported well-being and happiness across the world. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, there is now an urgent…

The paper presents a model for addressing the critical question of opportunity to learn for students with disabilities. The model was tested through a two-year study with schools and teachers in three states. Opportunity to learn analysis is critical in this educational era of push toward access and inclusion. The study results indicate that…

The article focuses on some findings of a comparative study carried out by a network of scholars and researchers who are active in the field of intercultural education in the European context in the main "old immigration countries" (United Kingdom, France and Germany), "new immigration countries" (Italy, Spain and Greece) and…

Fifty years after the release of "Equality of Educational Opportunity"--widely known as the Coleman Report--much of what James Coleman and his colleagues reported holds up well to scrutiny. It is, in fact, remarkable to read through the 700-plus pages and see how little has changed about what the empirical evidence says matters. The…

Online education programs continue to rely on a significant contingent of adjunct faculty to meet the instructional needs of the students. Discourse relating to this situation primarily focuses on the extent to which adjuncts are able to ensure the rigor and quality of instruction as well as the ability of the organization to attract, retain, and…

Building on the premise that closing achievement gaps is an economic imperative both to regain international educational supremacy and to maintain global economic competitiveness, I ask whether it is possible to rewrite the social contract so that education is a fundamental right--a statutory guarantee--that is both uniform across states and…

This study provides initial evidence supporting intended score interpretations for the purpose of assessing opportunity to learn (OTL) via an online teacher log. MyiLOGS yields 5 scores related to instructional time, content, and quality. Based on data from 46 middle school classes, the evidence indicated that (a) MyiLOGS has high usability, (b)…

The school-to-prison pipeline refers to the disturbing national trend in which children are funneled out of public schools and into juvenile and criminal justice systems. The purpose of this article is to theorize how this pipeline fulfills societal commitments to black male over-incarceration. First, the author reviews the troublesome perceptions…

Access to college has increased substantially over the last 50 years, but student success--defined as the combination of academic success and degree or certificate completion--has not kept pace. Student success, moreover, generally correlates with students' financial resources: Students from high-income families attend and complete college at…

Education practices focused on adult learners, such as prior learning assessment (PLA), are becoming more established in the United States. Initially, PLA was developed to provide greater access to higher education for World War II veterans and later for adult learners more generally as a way to balance the concentrated efforts most colleges and…

This research examines how high-school-aged undocumented immigrant Latinas/os and their families resist being marginalized in schools and in communities. These young people and their families are part of a university intergenerational participatory action research collective, Family School Partnership (FSP), located within an urban high school in…