The extensive body of research into summer learning loss and the expanding achievement gap is a well-known issue in education. Summer learning loss has been shown to significantly contribute to the achievement gap and have a more noticeable effect on students from a low-SES household when compared with higher income peers. The effects of summer…

Equal educational opportunity is a core American value. Yet many children of low-income or minority racial or ethnic status attend public schools that are lower quality compared with those that white children or high-income children attend. And data indicate that, on average, low-income or minority children score lower on states' elementary-school…

An achievement gap has persisted in elementary schools between Black and White students and Black students and Hispanic students in reading and math (NAEP, 2019). Nieto and Bode (2018) suggested that gaps in educational resources, learning opportunities, and educator expectations influence the achievement gap between Black students from low…

The steady increase in immigration in the United States over the past few decades has focused attention on the necessity for school districts to provide English language services in order for children with diverse language backgrounds to participate fully in public education. In this study, we utilize a large state-representative sample of…

Educational leaders struggle to improve and maintain student achievement while at the same time reduce the achievement gap between students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and their peers educated in higher socioeconomic communities. The practice of distributed leadership has shown promise in improving school achievement. The specific problem…

The overall purpose of this study was to determine the impact of the School Improvement Grant on student achievement in a rural elementary school in Mississippi. In an attempt to decrease the achievement gap that existed among socioeconomically disadvantaged students and their more affluent peers, the United States Department of Education created…

Socioeconomic achievement gaps have long been a central focus of educational research. However, not much is known about how (and why) between-district gaps vary among states, even though states are a primary organizational level in the decentralized education system in the United States. Using data from the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA),…

Between 2015 and 2016 we conducted computer based tests with 177 French migrant students enrolled in primary, middle and high schools, to evaluate their mathematical abilities and their levels of literacy. With 26 of this group, we supplemented data from their results with interviews and exercises on paper. By comparing their scores to those of…

While it is important to recognize the economic background of students and home factors contributing to their achievement, the purpose of this study was to discover what best practices schools were implementing with low socioeconomic students to narrow the achievement gap in communication arts (Darling-Hammond & Richardson, 2009; Gorski, 2013;…

In the face of rising economic and social inequality, American parents increasingly seek to promote their children's academic achievement through provision of enriching learning opportunities. In this study, we hypothesized that parental investments in both home and out-of-home learning resources may partially explain socioeconomic disparities in…

Based on growing evidence of the long-term benefits of enriched early childhood experiences, we evaluate the potential for addressing gender disparities in elementary school through early care and education programs. Specifically, we explore the community-wide effects of two statewide initiatives in North Carolina on gender differences in academic…

Stereotype threat--a situational context in which individuals are concerned about confirming a negative stereotype--has been frequently shown to test performance, with one hypothesized mechanism being that cognitive resources are temporarily coopted by intrusive thoughts and worries, leading individuals to underperform despite high content…

Purpose: The aims of the current project were twofold: (a) to describe the use of academic words in written language samples by fifth-grade students and (b) to examine the predictive relation between academic word use in academic writing and reading comprehension. Method: Investigators utilized written expository responses of 1,128 students in…

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…