Community colleges have been an educational source for individuals to increase capital and social mobility. But the reality of these opportunities is not the same for all. First generation, low income, non-traditional minority students make up a large percentage of students enrolling in community colleges yet retention rates, primarily for African…

Food insecurity has broad detrimental impacts on college students, including failing grades, depression, and social disconnection. Social disconnection is concerning as students often use various support resources to manage food insecurity. Racial disparities in food insecurity are well documented in the literature. The purpose of the current…

We aimed to identify individual (family) and school protective factors that are critical to academic success among African American students, using Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. A total of 2020 African American students in 463 schools from the Educational Longitudinal Study provided data. We developed a multilevel logistic model…

Initiatives promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in predominantly White contexts, including STEM fields, have primarily relied on approaches to increase the representation of minoritized individuals. However, an increase in the representation of minoritized individuals is only one step of the process, as the present study suggests that…

Racial disparities in school discipline may have collateral consequences on the larger non-suspended student population. The present study leveraged two longitudinal datasets with 1201 non-suspended adolescents (48% Black, 52% White; 55% females, 45% males; M[subscript age]: 12-13) enrolled in 84 classrooms in an urban mid-Atlantic city of the…

The current study is a conceptual replication of the influence of an advanced educational opportunity and several student propensities to learn on a college-readiness assessment for mathematics (ACT scores) among an important and under-studied group of students. We focused on a sample of predominantly Black students from economically-disadvantaged…

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs collects information from all states on the education of students with disabilities, including the number of students that exit special education and transfer back to general education. Yet, little is known about students that are declassified. In this study, we used data from…

Research in the United States suggests that teachers view Black students' misbehavior as more likely to reoccur, but such research has not disentangled the effect of race from related factors. We used conjoint analysis to experimentally test the effect of multiple student characteristics on the chances of being referred for a behavior intervention…

African American youth are more likely to experience racial discrimination, which contributes to greater sensitivity to disrespect and aggressive behavior. However, little is known about possible reciprocal relationships among discrimination, disrespect sensitivity, and aggression. This study investigated these reciprocal relationships and whether…

School buses may be a critical education policy lever, breaking the link between schools and neighborhoods and facilitating access to school choice. Yet, little is known about the commute for bus riders, including the average length of the bus ride or whether long commutes harm academic outcomes. We begin to fill this gap using data from New York…

Rates of expulsion from early care and education settings (e.g., childcare and preschool programs) exceed those in K-12, and relatively little is known of how to prevent such disciplinary decisions. In addition, expulsion disproportionately affects children of color, especially boys. The present study explores a potential protective strategy…

Many students across the country experienced a decline in academic performance due to COVID-19. As a result, college readiness measures have fallen short, especially in math. This lack of preparation frequently leads to additional teaching, wasting important class time by going over the prerequisite content again instead of using it to study new…

This research investigates whether teachers' unions influence student academic achievement in Southern states that prohibit collective bargaining. Our data are from the School and Staffing Survey and the Stanford Education Data Archive. We measure the strength of teachers' unions by union membership rate and meet-and-confer status of a district…

Existing measures of belonging in schools do not explicitly elevate the contextual and cultural insights of the educators and students they were designed to assess. Our study addresses this shortcoming through the co-creation of an Opportunities to Belong survey measure for urban middle schoolers. The tool was developed in partnership with…

Students who are Black or Hispanic have long been disproportionately represented in K-12 gifted and talented services. However, there are schools that have diverged from this trend by identifying atypically high numbers of Black and Hispanic students. In this conceptual replication of Peters and Johnson, we present predictors of whether a school…