Black men and women have different levels of average educational attainment, yet few studies have focused on explaining how and why these patterns develop. One explanation may be inequality in experiences with institutional punishment through exclusionary school discipline and criminal justice exposure. Drawing on intersectional frameworks and…

This narrative inquiry study explored how higher education impacted undergraduate students' retention, focusing on first-generation college students (FGCS) of color at an urban public R1 university in the mid-South. A key objective was to understand these students' challenges today and how the intersection of their identities influenced their…

States have invested heavily in improving early childhood education in hopes of improving student reading and math skills before they enter kindergarten. However, there is limited national data from later than 2010 on children's skills in these areas at kindergarten entry, so it is difficult for educators and policy makers to ascertain whether…

Data have consistently revealed a major problem with disproportionality in several academic and social climate measures for African American students compared to their White counterparts. Black students tend to have lower end-of-course (EOC) testing scores in mathematics and reading, a greater tendency to be suspended from school, lower average…

Black women have been making successful strides in mathematics for decades; however, they continue to be underrepresented in mathematics and other STEM fields. According to Young et al. (2017), Black girls and women perform lower in mathematics than all other racial gender groups except for Black males. Considering the stakes for Black girls and…

The racial academic achievement gap in America's public schools persists and there is solid research explaining the elements that have led to and support it. Much of this research is deficit-based and highlights the vulnerabilities of those who fall at the bottom of that gap. Not enough research is invested in celebrating, highlighting, or…

The critical consciousness framework informs us that for parents and teachers of Black youth to be best positioned to disrupt systemic racism in education they must both critically reflect on the systems that oppress Black youth and become motivated to challenge those systems. Still, little empirical research exists investigating the critical…

At all levels of education, the racial achievement gap in performance between Black and Latino students and their White peers stubbornly persists. While the causes of this gap are numerous and interrelated, one theory posits that students from underrepresented racial groups may face stereotype threat, meaning that fear of failing and thereby…

Harold Washington College (HWC), one of seven institutions in the City Colleges of Chicago system, is a minority-serving community college. During the 2018-2019 academic year, HWC was a recipient of the Pathways to Results (PTR) Implementation Communities grant funded by the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB), with support from the Office of…

Inequities have existed in formal public education since its inception in the United States. The educational experiences and outcomes for Black students have historically lagged behind their non-Hispanic, and White peers. This dissertation uses data from The Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey for the Kindergarten Class of 2011 (ECLS-K: 2011) to…

The intransigence of the achievement gaps in schools in this nation and in the school districts in which I served as a building administrator or district support staff member was the motivation for conducting this examination of the role of expectations for success relative to achievement on assessments. This study investigated the possible…

We use data from the Stanford Education Data Archive to describe district-level trends in average academic achievement between 2009 and 2019. Although on average school districts' test scores improved very modestly (by about 0.001 standard deviations per year), there is significant variation among districts. Moreover, we find that average test…

Despite the steady growth in transfer enrollment in the California State University (CSU) system, Black transfer students face significant equity gaps in access and completion. This study aims to enhance the limited research on the transfer experiences of Black students at four-year institutions, particularly within the CSU system, where over 40%…

Educational professional development is ubiquitous; yet the gains on student learning are minimal as measured by local, state, and federal assessment measures. Although there is widespread agreement that assessment data alone does not tell the story of what students are learning and teachers are teaching, the data is still alarming. Why is there a…

Understanding how and why rising racial and economic segregation impacts achievement gaps is critical to closing them. Analyzing data from every school district in the U.S., researchers sean reardon, Erin Fahle, Heewon Jang, and Ericka Weathers evaluate how growing racial segregation interacts with unequal economic opportunities and contributes to…