The general academic disadvantage faced by children of immigrants is already a well-documented regularity in Spain. However, there is no reliable knowledge on how academic achievement is ethnically stratified and more research is needed to understand the determinants behind these achievement gaps. This study aims to further knowledge of both…

This study investigated the factors influencing students' performance in science subjects at different schools in a school district in the midland area of South Carolina. For the convenience of the study and to maintain confidentiality, the school district is named Midland School District 2022. The population of this study included students in…

While the ongoing academic impacts of the COVID pandemic in grades 3-8 has been well documented, far less is known about its effects on students who were in pre-K or kindergarten when the pandemic started in March 2020. In this brief, we focus on students who were in first and second grade in the 2021-22 school year, and for whom the majority of…

Empirical evidence suggests children's socio-emotional skills--an important determinant of school achievement--vary according to socioeconomic family background. This study assesses the degree to which differences in socio-emotional skills contribute to the achievement gap between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged children. We used…

The purpose of this research is to determine whether the achievement gap between Black and White students differs significantly between Minnesota public charter schools and traditional Minnesota public schools. The reading and math proficiency gaps between Black and White students in Minnesota are among the largest in the nation. Despite the fact…

Inequality in college has both structural and psychological causes; these include the presence of self-defeating beliefs about the potential for growth and belonging. Such beliefs can be addressed through large-scale interventions in the college transition (Walton & Cohen, 2011; Walton et al., 2023) but are hard to measure. In our…

Use of high-stakes exams in a course has been associated with gender, racial, and socioeconomic inequities. We investigated whether offering students the opportunity to retake an exam makes high-stakes exams more equitable. Following the control value theory of achievement emotions, we hypothesized that exam retakes would increase students'…

There is evidence of the impact of school segregation on students' academic achievement, but it is debated whether the extent of this impact is dependent on students' socioeconomic status, or on their native or non-native condition. This research addresses the problem in Spain, seeking to determine how immigrant and socioeconomic segregation…

Countries and cities around the world increasingly rely on centralized systems to assign students to schools. Two algorithms, deferred acceptance (DA) and immediate acceptance (IA), are widespread. The latter is often criticized for harming disadvantaged families who fail to get access to popular schools. This paper investigates the effect of the…

Higher education participation has increased worldwide given policies devoted to widening participation for under-represented groups, including the use of alternative entry pathways to university. It is, however, unknown if students admitted via alternative pathways perform well academically. This study uses data for 81,874 students from 16…

There is a large and long-standing gap in education outcomes between pupils from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers in England (EEF, 2018; Hutchinson et al., 2020). Although there is some evidence of improvement since 2011, the gap has widened recently, largely as a result of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic…

Studies in relation to working-class students at elite universities document on the one hand the role of 'mundane reflexivity' in dealing with class domination while on the other indicate a new form of domination and disadvantages working on these working-class 'exceptions' -- they may achieve academically at university but experience various…

Early language competence is a reliable and powerful predictor of children's success in school, and word gaps linked to socioeconomic status disparities have cascading effects on academic outcomes. While early research -- such as the work of Hart and Risley (1995) -- focused on gaps in vocabulary, growing evidence reveals wide gaps in syntax as…

The impact of self-fulfilling prophecy in education, and of attainment grouping on pupil self-perception, remain topics of longstanding debate, with important consequences for social in/justice. Focusing on self-confidence, this article draws on survey responses from 9,059 12-13 year olds who were tracked by subject ('setting'). They provided…

University ranking systems are being implemented with the aim of assessing and comparing higher education institutions at a global level. Despite their being increasingly used, rankings are often strongly criticized for their social and economic implications, as well as for limitations in their technical implementation. One of these limitations is…