Are state universities and state scholarship programs perpetuating income inequality in the United States? Using data from Florida on the number of students from each public high school in the state who attended a State University System (SUS) university and the number who received a Florida Bright Futures (FBF) scholarship, this paper attempts to…

Public policies targeting individuals based on need often impose disproportionate burden on communities that lack the resources to implement these policies effectively. In an elementary school setting, I examine whether community-level interventions focusing on similar needs and providing resources to build capacity in these communities could…

Community College Written Communication 1 (ENC) instructors encounter complex challenges when attempting to teach writing skills to diverse student populations. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to explore the perceptions of full-time community college ENC faculty and determine the instructional strategies they use to…

Many states report school performance grades as a way to inform the public about school quality. However, past research has shown that when these grades drew largely on proficiency-based measures, they served to capture variation in school and community demographics rather than school quality. We extend this literature by examining whether a…

Developmental education reform has shown promising evidence toward improving short-term outcomes, yet questions remain about whether these early gains contribute momentum toward mid-term and longer-term postsecondary success. In 2014, Florida implemented one of the nation's most comprehensive developmental education reforms. Many students became…

Summer youth employment programs (SYEPs) have the potential to serve as critical bridges to promising careers, especially for young people who hail from disadvantaged backgrounds or reside in underserved areas. Summer jobs can provide early exposure to professional environments, equipping participants with essential skills for the workplace,…

Comparatively worse health outcomes persist for historically underserved populations relative to their more privileged peers due to systemic health inequities in the United States and worldwide. The relationship between preventable health differences and social injustice is salient, with recurring media coverage of viral outbreaks and televized…

The Learning Team at The Florida Aquarium in Tampa received funding in 2014 to create and conduct a long-term outdoor learning experience for Hillsborough County, Florida, fifth-grade students. The program was designed with four parts to optimize students' experiences in their local watershed, including both classroom and field activities. This…

Graduation rates and standardized test scores are common indicators to measure student academic achievement. These indicators have revealed a gap between two socioeconomic cohorts of students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Students attending high-poverty schools have lower academic performance than students attending low-poverty schools. As a…

While Black students have experienced significant growth in college enrollment since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Higher Education Act of 1965, they are still less likely than their white counterparts to attend and graduate from a post-secondary institution (Ryan & Bauman, 2016). There have been previous studies on college…

This study addresses the need for improved pedagogical strategies in early childhood and elementary social studies education, focusing on reducing instructional disparities and opportunity gaps for lower socio-economic status (SES) students. Utilizing the wonder framework by Conijn et al. (2022), we propose a design-based approach to enhance…

U.S. students have lost significant learning in mathematics and other subjects since the start of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in early 2020. The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress mathematics scores for students in grades 4 and 8 reflected record declines; the largest decreases were for students experiencing…