This paper examines the relationship between teacher pay and students' academic achievement, using nationally representative, district-level linked data between districts' performance on standardized tests and average teacher base salary. By employing state fixed effects and multilevel mixed effects models, we find that both mathematics and…

This doctoral dissertation investigates the effects of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy on educational equity in New Jersey, focusing on three primary research questions. Firstly, the study examines whether the implementation of NCLB mandates led to the closure of achievement gaps between black and white students, as evidenced by disparities…

Public school board members are charged with the responsibility and accountability to provide governance-level advocacy for equity and excellence in public education. This qualitative study examined the perceptions of school board members in three K--8 school districts in the midwestern part of the United States regarding the 50+ year Race-Based…

Autonomy is often discussed as a necessary condition for professionalism in any field, including the teaching profession. In the educational context, autonomy is seen to be critical for teachers to be able to synthesize their knowledge and skills and translate them into effective classroom practices in the best interest of their students. In…

Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. students attend rural schools. Researchers report that at least half of public schools are rural in 12 states (i.e., Montana, South Dakota, Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Alaska, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Mississippi) (Showalter et al., 2019). Providing quality education to all rural students is a…

To ensure all children can be successful in school and beyond, states have increasingly supported and expanded pre-kindergarten (pre-k) programs aimed and improving student outcomes and reducing disparities. While research has shown generally positive short-term outcomes for specific programs, state design and support for pre-k programs varies…

This study focused on a problem of practice at Mystic River School (MRS), a kindergarten through eighth grade school in an urban district in New England. Schoolwide diagnostic data showed a significant gap between multilingual learners (MLs) and their native English speaking peers in literacy. An analysis of this data, interviews with staff and…

Background: Socioeconomic characteristics are persistently and systematically related to academic outcomes, despite long-standing efforts to reduce educational inequality. Ireland has a strong policy focus on alleviating educational disadvantage and has seen significant improvements in mathematics and science performance in recent years. This…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires annual data collection to monitor the provision of special education services, yet federal reports rarely disaggregate trends for English learners (ELs). In merging all available annual data files required under IDEA from 2006 to 2020, the present study provides the first large-scale…

As the 2020-21 school year opens amid the COVID-19 pandemic's disruption, this third and final installment of Quality Counts 2020 delivers a data-driven portrait of the nation's school system along with A-F grades and rankings for each state on a wide range of academic, school finance, and socioeconomic indicators. This report also includes an…

The study uses data from five assessment points for reading and maths. It focuses on a constant sample of students, all of whom completed a Rising Stars assessment in 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also administered three teacher surveys: the first focused on the initial period of lockdown, the second focused on the autumn 2020…

The purpose of this APA BEA Racial Disparities Task Force report is to examine the role of racism and bias on educational opportunity and achievement disparities experienced by children. Specifically, we seek to link racism explicitly to opportunity gaps by examining how racism operates on multiple levels. Using critical race theory,…

Research to date on the effects of between-school tracking on inequalities in achievement and on performance has been inconclusive. A possible explanation is that different studies used different data, focused on different domains, and employed different measures of inequality. To address this issue, we used all accumulated data collected in the…

We examine access to effective teachers for low-income students in 26 geographically dispersed school districts over a 5-year period. We measure teacher effectiveness using a value-added model that accounts for measurement error in prior test scores and peer effects. Differences between the average value added of teachers of high- and low-income…

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…