Significant disparities in degree attainment rates between Black and White undergraduates at a public university in the Midwest regions of the United States have prompted concern. While these disparities are well-documented, there is limited understanding of how faculty perceive their role in fostering Black student success. This study addressed…

Efforts to bridge educational achievement gaps and address inequities remain a central challenge across the United States. The multitiered system of supports has emerged as a prominent intervention framework with which to equip educators for this task. Given its growing adoption across school districts, a deeper understanding of teacher…

Most of us assume that public schools in America are unequal--that the quality of the education varies with the location of the school and that as a result, children learn more in the schools that serve mostly rich, white kids than in the schools serving mostly poor, black kids. But it turns out that this common assumption is misplaced. As Douglas…

The gaps in education in America continue to march on at staggering rates. Gaps in academic achievement, college acceptance, standardized test scores, and access to resources continue to marginalize Black students in the United States compared to their white counterparts. Pittsburgh, PA, with the second-largest school district in Pennsylvania and…

Students in poverty need both academic and social supports. Former New York City Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew and scholar Pedro Noguera argue that students in poverty need both intensive academic and social supports. They maintain that U.S. education policy, with its focus on academic accountability, has generally failed to grasp this dual…

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…

Two years ago, the Heritage Foundation "Backgrounder" "Equity Elementary" (ED616087) first examined the extent to which the idea that educational institutions should have Chief Diversity Officers (CDO) had spread from higher education into public school districts. That "Backgrounder" also examined whether there was a…

Funding for California's schools has reached record-high levels, although the pandemic has exacerbated longstanding inequities in student outcomes. As policymakers grapple with questions around how much to fund schools and how that funding should be distributed, existing research can provide insights into where and how to use additional funds to…

With rising state and local revenues--and significant one-time federal funds in 2020-21 and 2021-22--California policymakers now have greater capacity to invest in public schools. At the same time, longstanding racial and income disparities motivate calls to provide funding more efficiently and equitably. This policy brief is adapted from Julien…

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…

Chicago Public Schools (CPS), like most large urban school districts, has been confronted in recent years with challenges related to inequity. In May of 2018, CPS posted an open position for a chief equity officer with the goal to create an office that will address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion for staff and students leading to…

Education Development Center's (EDC) systemic equity review framework helps education leaders take a deeper look at inequities in order to understand the complex systems that affect student performance. While equity audits have historically played a role in curriculum assessments and state accountability systems, achievement gaps by race and class…

This qualitative phenomenological study explored how 19 school leaders in seven California comprehensive high schools were making sense of data and using data to transform their schools by closing achievement gap for historically underrepresented students. Data is a powerful tool in the hands of school leaders to transform patterns of inequality…

Decades after the 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka" unanimous decision to desegregate schools, the ideology of Black people having equal educational opportunities has not been realized; Black people continue to lag in educational attainment. However, the inequalities in life experiences between Black and White people limit the…

An analysis of student test-score data shows that employing a chief diversity officer (CDO) in K-12 school districts does not contribute to closing achievement gaps and is even likely to exacerbate those gaps. If CDOs are not accomplishing their stated goals, what is accomplished by creating these positions? CDOs may be best understood as…