U.S. public schools are highly segregated by both race and class. Prior research shows that the desegregation of Southern schools in the 1960s and 1970s led to significant benefits for black students, including increased educational attainment and higher earnings. We do not know, however, whether segregation today has the same harmful effects as…

Black students remain under enrolled in AP courses compared to White peers, even with intentional outreach. One possible reason for this continued disparity is that Black students may choose not to enroll in AP courses where they are racially isolated. Using the 2017-2018 Civil Rights Data Collection and multilevel modeling, I examine the…

Background/Context: Increasing evidence suggests a connection between racial differences in rates of exclusionary discipline (suspensions/expulsions) and academic achievement by (Losen & Martinez, 2020; Reardon et al., 2018). Black students receive out-of-school suspensions and expulsions at disproportionately higher rates, which is associated…

This article addresses what we are calling "the gaps," the divergent and contextual understandings of "opportunity gap" and "achievement gap" evident in interviews with principals and school district leaders. Drawing from a sample of 22 interviews in urban, inner-ring suburban, and outer-ring suburban schools in a…

The rapid expansion of school choice is restructuring public education in the United States. This study examines associations between charter and magnet school enrollment, White-Black and White-Hispanic segregation, and test score gaps at the district level from 2009 to 2015 in third to eighth grade using the Stanford Education Data Archive and…

The achievement gap has been identified as a significant challenge faced by school districts across the nation and has been an item on the national agenda for quite some time. Students that are part of the identified disaggregated groups are not achieving at the same rate as their White and Asian counterparts. While urban schools have had to deal…

Black boys in grades third through fifth are not developing reading comprehension skills compared to their peers in an urban southeastern school district. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore perceptions of third through fifth grade reading teachers on reading comprehension of Black boys in this district. The conceptual…

At Haverford High School, a suburban high school in Haverford, Pennsylvania, a mathematical achievement gap exists for economically disadvantaged, special education, and Black students. Researchers have found that students in lower tracked classes often receive less rigorous tasks, tasks with lower cognitive demand, and fewer tasks that focus on…

From 1896 to 1954, the "separate but equal" doctrine instituted by the landmark "Plessy v. Ferguson" case reverberated in public education in the United States until its rejection in the 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka" Supreme Court decision. In this integrative literature review, the authors sought to…

This study investigates whether teaching practices of non-minorities who teach Black students has an impact on the achievement gap between Black and White students. There is a lack of awareness of culturally relevant teaching in the U.S public school system (Epstein, 2005). Per NCES (2015), 80% of public schools have a high density of Black…

The following research sought to investigate the impact of a comprehensive school counseling program based on the American School Counselor Association's Recognized (ASCA) Model Program known as RAMP, on student achievement and college readiness. The study was conducted on a comprehensive high school campus in California, which included 2,700…

Leveraging achievement data measured in the fall and spring of kindergarten through eighth grade for 840,000 students attending 8,800 public schools, we report novel evidence on how achievement and growth patterns differ between rural and nonrural schools. Rural students start kindergarten slightly ahead of nonrural students but fall behind by…

Despite policy efforts to increase Advanced Placement (AP) course-taking among Black students, gaps in AP course-taking persist. Many question whether offering more AP courses is a sufficient policy solution. However, few studies have examined the effect of course offerings on disparities within racially diverse high schools. Using national…

The purpose of this oral history is to document the lived experience of the learning environment of African American students and culturally specific practices of African American teachers who taught in the legally segregated Louisville Central High School. Historically, segregated African American schools have been depicted as inferior…

Inequalities in education have existed since the beginning of formal education. Educational disparities often emerge as you compare groups of students based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, and geography. This chapter seeks to stress the important role that early childhood experiences, including specific structures and processes…