Florida's developmental education reform has benefitted most students directly impacted by the reform and has helped to reduce existing achievement gaps by race/ethnicity, English Language Learner status, and academic preparation in short-term outcomes like college course-taking and credit accumulation. Even though the reform was not specifically…

In 2021, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) made a monumental move to require postsecondary institutions to evaluate and document their actions to ensure fairness in admissions, an inclusive learning environment, and equitable student outcomes. Around the same time, a team comprising educational measurement experts, diversity…

Equity gaps in students' experiences and academic outcomes often exist in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) college courses, particularly early prerequisite courses. The Student Experience Project (SEP) is a collaboration between college instructors, university leaders, and national education and improvement organizations to…

Making college accessible to all includes making it affordable to lower-income families. A growing policy strategy at the state level is to provide individual students with need-based financial aid to offset tuition and living expenses. This strategy inherently presents challenges in choosing which income levels are eligible to receive aid,…

College completion rates are low--nearly 40 percent of students do not earn a degree within six years of enrolling in college. Community college students face the highest hurdles--about 60 percent are without a degree six years after matriculating. Research has identified strategies that institutions can use to improve student success and degree…

Even though school systems throughout the United States have developed a variety of programs to decrease the achievement gap between underrepresented groups and students classified as members of the majority group, data regarding their effectiveness are either scarce or inconclusive. Some research suggests an increasing number of public-school…

The study focused on institutional efforts to retain and support racially minoritized students in higher education. The purpose of the study was to explore the experience of faculty and staff implementing California Assembly Bill 705 (AB 705), a legislative mandate intended to increase student achievement and close equity gaps among Black and…

This brief describes the types of college promises that exist in the state of California. In doing so, we summarize existing research on this topic. Furthermore, we provide a framework to study the California Promise Program in community colleges in California. We use publicly available data to highlight key aspects of our proposed framework: What…

Urban schools in the United States are generally viewed as having greater challenges than their suburban and rural counterparts. Most notably, they often have lower academic achievement and much of the educational reform movement has been aimed at urban schools in an attempt to close the achievement gap. Although much of the focus in recent years…

In 2014, as part of the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) Ohio Demonstration, Lorain County Community College launched Students Accelerating in Learning (SAIL), a comprehensive student success program that is substantially improving persistence and graduation rates among low-income students. Given the program's results, Lorain has…

Teaching standards within the UK's higher education sector are under unprecedented scrutiny not only in terms of perceived "highly variable" standards of teaching but also in relation to the clear attainment gap between black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) students and their white counterparts. Gentle taps at the door to the higher…

Summarizing my prior work, the only book length treatment of the "acting White" phenomenon (Buck, 2010), I argue that while desegregation was both a moral necessity and a social good, the manner in which desegregation was implemented by White authorities led indirectly to today's achievement gaps. In the course of desegregation…

The study explored the challenges that impact on the implementation of PLAP in the Primary schools. The research was conducted with teachers who study towards the BEd Management degree with Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) in the Midlands Region. The study used a qualitative research approach and collected data through open ended questionnaires and…

Learning assistant (LA) programs have been implemented at a range of institutions, usually as part of a comprehensive curricular transformation accompanied by a pedagogical switch to active learning. While this shift in pedagogy has led to increased student learning gains, the positive effect of LAs has not yet been distinguished from that of…

In 2008 the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) confronted a problem that has been growing for decades. It boasted the highest academic performance of any large urban district in California, yet its achievement gap was widening, as too many African American, Latino, and low-income students fell far behind their classmates. The…