The COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented adoption of online learning in community colleges. On one hand, online learning increases access and offers students flexibility and convenience. On the other hand, existing research illustrates online courses increase achievement and equity gaps. Hence, this article contends that online learning in…

Achievement gaps exist along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, social class, and ability status from elementary school to graduate school in the United States. Instructors can help reduce achievement gaps by adopting practices that have been shown to promote the success of students from marginalized groups, so-called "inclusive teaching…

Social media has increased students' cultural awareness today, pivoting a need to implement cultural responsiveness in the classroom climate. Twenty-first-century learners need effective teachers who create meaningful experiences and optimize student learning by intentionally working to connect with students, adapting to diverse cultures, and…

In all years of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in primary mathematics education, Finland ranked in the lower places (44-61) in the dispersion index (the difference in scores between the 95th percentile and the 5th percentile), while Israel ranked in the upper places (1-3) in the same index. In the last PISA test, Israel…

What if you had a collaborative process of looking at student data that could pinpoint student gaps in learning and suggest effective strategies to close those gaps? What if you knew not only what you should "start" doing to enhance student learning, but also what you should stop doing because it hasn't given you the hoped-for results?…

This book explains seven critical steps to improve children's writing. Though seemingly 'natural', writing proves devilishly difficult for far too many school pupils and closing this gap can have a lasting impact on their academic and life success. With the goal of giving every teacher the knowledge and skill to teach writing with confidence, it…

Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation was to examine school improvement strategies that were recommended to improve the academics of a campus, shifting from low performing to academic success. Method: In this study, a quantitative content analysis was used to identify common school improvement strategies that are shared in school leadership…

At all educational levels, the number of English learners continues to increase; their academic and linguistic success are growing concerns. The problem is that middle school English learners struggle to reach English proficiency in literacy and language. Closing the achievement gap is a challenge for both English learners and middle school…

Improving schooling by reducing achievement gaps based on family background has been on the agenda of school governance worldwide for more than three decades. International benchmarking like the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is used to find models of best practice in effective school governance. Enlarging school…

Learning communities for college students have been shown to improve first-year student outcomes and narrow equity gaps, but longer-term data to evaluate whether these benefits persist through multi-year retention and graduation are rare. This is especially important for students in science, technology, engineering and math, who often confront…

Despite some gains, women continue to be underrepresented in many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Using a national longitudinal dataset of 690 participants born in 1991, we tested whether spatial skills, measured in middle childhood, would help explain this gender gap. We modeled the relation between 4th-grade spatial…

In every classroom across our great state--from Monroe to Manistee and Mt. Pleasant to Marquette--every Michigan student deserves access and opportunity to the educational resources and support to realize a bright future. Yet for too long, Michigan's education system has served as an engine of inequality when it should be providing opportunities…

The academic success of historically and systematically excluded (HSE) students, including Black, Brown, Indigenous, low-income, multilingual learners, and students with learning differences, remains impacted by social position and identity factors. Despite numerous education reform efforts, equity in education continues to be a pressing challenge…

The purpose of this mixed method study is to determine the effectiveness of the corequisite model on collegiate mathematics developmental education. Corequisite models are designed to allow students who place into pre-college level courses to complete the prerequisite material and college-level coursework simultaneously in their first semester.…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there are significant differences in the English/Language Arts proficiency scores of elementary school students who attend a traditional public school or one of two types of turnaround schools in a large metropolitan school district in the southern region of the United States. The goal was to determine…