Can summer programs, as remedial supplements to regular schooling, extend learning opportunities and other benefits to disadvantaged students? To frame this question, we compare logics from "social reproduction" and "partial compensation" perspectives, and then apply them to a large mixed method study of four kinds of summer…

Canada prides itself for being multi-cultural, valuing diversity, and having educational outcomes that have been identified as excellent and equitable with above average performance and lower than average impact of socio-economic status and immigrant status in PISA. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, plus policies concerning child care,…

Schools, as social systems, may knowingly or unintentionally perpetuate inequities through unchallenged oppressive systems. This paper focuses on mathematics as a subject area in school practices in which inequities seem to be considered normal. Issues of racism and racialization in the discipline of mathematics are predominantly lived through the…

This review examines four books that may offer some insight into what the discussion about educational policy, reform, and performance may look like after the era of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Collectively, "The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling" by Jal Mehta,…

Measuring the distance between countries and the goal of equality of opportunity in education has been the focus of recent contributions in the economic literature, which have concentrated either on intergroup gaps in access to a given level of studies or on intergroup gaps in educational achievement. We argue that both aspects are important and…

Despite widespread discussion in the United States, up until now there has not been a review of the demographic and contextual factors associated with Canadian academic achievement. Using Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) framework, a scoping review was conducted to answer two questions: What demographic and contextual factors are most commonly used in…

This qualitative study intends to highlight social injustices that appear of the greatest concern to school leaders. Semi-structured interviews were used to glean data on principals' work contexts, their perceptions of social in/justices, and relevant anecdotes, stories, and examples. Twenty-one elementary and secondary school principals were…

In this paper we perform a critical discourse analysis on the policy document Ontario's Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy (2009). We examine the three core priorities the policy outlines: improve student achievement, reduce achievement gap and increase public confidence in public education. This document is approached from the context of new…

In a recent paper, Reardon found that the relationship between family income and children's academic achievement grew substantially stronger in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States. We provide an international context for these results by examining the income-achievement association in 19 other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and…

Policymakers worldwide are trying to figure how best to organize, govern, and support their education systems. They must manage multiple goals, such as workforce development, nurturing knowledgeable citizens, and ensuring educational opportunity. Some countries approach these issues with a public investment in teacher professionalization and a…

In this paper, we undertake a particular policy critique and analysis of the gender achievement gap discourse in Ontario and Canada, and situate it within the context of what has been termed "the governance turn" in educational policy with its focus on policy as numbers and its multi-scalar manifestations. We show how this "gap…

Why does the United States lag behind so many other countries on international education assessments? The traditional view targets school-based explanations--U.S. schools attract poorer teachers and lack the proper incentives. But the U.S. educational system may also serve children with comparatively greater academic challenges as a result of…

This article examines equity in national systems of education in terms of differences in student outcomes, as measured by mathematics achievement scores on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003. The author uses four measures for assessing equity in student outcomes: (1) the strength of the relationship between student…