In spring 2020, a worldwide pandemic caused many postsecondary institutions to pivot from face-to-face to online learning for the remainder of the semester. While some institutions reverted to face-to-face teaching in fall 2020, many institutions mainly remained online. As a result, the effect of students' disparate access to enabling technology…

In spring 2022, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology (OET) committed to advancing digital equity through the Digital Equity Education Roundtables (DEER) Initiative. Through DEER, OET hosted a series of national conversations with leaders from community-based organizations, as well as families and learners furthest…

Coloniality permeates across realms and leaves no systemic stone unturned in its path. As such, coloniality manifests in our education system through a variety of practices, policies, and procedures that center Western-European modern rationality and White supremacy. To disrupt and decenter these unilateral paradigms within our schools is to…

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 purpose of "The Pathways and Experiences of Illinois Computer Science Undergraduate Students Series," as the name suggests, is to understand the pathways and experiences of computer science (CS) and tech students in post-secondary programs throughout Illinois, paying particular attention to students from historically marginalized…

Both the United States and the United Nations have identified, examined, and put out a call to action to address the educational inequities that have disproportionately and negatively affected racially minoritized students, as well as those from a lower socioeconomic background, and poorer countries. Data from the Nations Report Card and the…

At 30 sites across the United States and Puerto Rico, the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities provides economically and socially marginalized adults with a free college course in the humanities. The experience of non-traditional adult students, particularly adults of color, is often missing from academic literature, exacerbating past…

Young children bring rich social, cultural, and political knowledge to school, cultivated in their homes and communities. This knowledge, ranging from household skills to multilingual practices, is often marginalized in schools that value different norms. Drawing from ethnographic studies in Illinois and New York kindergarten classrooms, this…

The dearth of Latinx and African American (AA) professionals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields is most concerning. AA and Latinx workers in the labor market hold an 11% and 17% share of US workers, respectively. However, these groups only contribute 9% and 8%, respectively, of STEM professionals and 4.8 and 6% of…

Early life adversity influences the diurnal cortisol rhythm, yet the relative influence of different characteristics of adversity remains unknown. In this study, we examine how developmental timing (childhood vs. adolescence), severity (major vs. minor), and domain of early life adversity relate to diurnal cortisol rhythms in late adolescence. We…

In this pilot study, we examine the realities of differential funding structures across the US, which disproportionately disadvantage historically marginalized communities (Black and Brown students) and students living in poverty, contributing to an intractable opportunity gap. Prior research indicates that equitable funding can, in fact, decrease…

The COVID-19 pandemic began in the late months of 2019, and by the spring of 2020, to limit transmission of the virus, schools across the globe closed and transitioned to emergency online teaching. While the move to online teaching and learning was inevitable, many learners, especially in rural and remote areas, found that online schooling had…

This paper uses data from research projects that deliberately set out to tell positive stories about educators who were working with the children and families of migratory agricultural workers in the US. The aim underpinning these projects was to move beyond the deficit discourses and stories of blame that so often circulate, particularly in…

State education data systems help policymakers use data to evaluate the impact of their efforts to improve education. By disaggregating the data -- that is, breaking it out by different student subgroups -- policymakers can ensure that their efforts address the needs of students who have been traditionally underserved in educational settings. Yet…

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools across the United States, upending traditional approaches to education and requiring large scale school transformation on a pace never before seen. Though prior research on organizational change has emphasized the importance of working conditions for teacher satisfaction and student achievement…