Extending work documenting historical resource inequities across U.S. schools, we examined how school financial and social resources mediate the relationship between family income and student achievement, and tested how these associations varied by race and ethnicity. Merging administrative school data sources to a nationally representative sample…

In 2019 the world experienced a medical emergency that impacted education across the world. Several states in the United States had professional learning communities introduced into their schools as a means to enhance academic achievement prior to COVID 19. In order to show support to the schools and increase student achievement, a state…

Given urban school and district administrators' historical challenges with recruiting and retaining a high-quality, racially diverse teacher workforce, there is a need to better understand the factors shaping why graduates return to teach in their home district. This descriptive study examines the high school students who returned to teach in…

The COVID-19 pandemic, as experienced globally, disrupted students' learning environment affecting their learning strategies, mode of engagement, participation, and assessment. As first-year students, many feel stressed and overwhelmed while trying to adapt to "university life," and experiencing a pandemic that affected their…

Research increasingly seeks to answer the question: does special education work? This is different than asking if specific interventions have positive effects and instead aims to identify system-wide impacts. We systematically review published quantitative research on the impact of receiving special education services on student outcomes using…

In this statewide multiyear investigation, the extent to which differences were present on the STAAR English I End-of-Course exam for Texas high school students as a function of their ethnicity/race (i.e., Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White) for the 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2020-2021, 2021-2022, and 2022-2023 school years were examined. Archival data…

Skin tone-based social stratification is an enduring part of the U.S. racial landscape. Despite literature finding that skin tone informs educational outcomes among adults, few studies have examined these processes in early childhood. The current study tested whether skin tone predicted Mexican-origin 5-year-old children's academic readiness…

Chronic absenteeism spiked during the pandemic and remains a serious problem. Drawing on the American Enterprise Institute's Return to Learn Tracker chronic absenteeism data collection, which includes district-level data from 44 states, this report documents modest progress: National chronic absenteeism fell to 25.4 percent in 2023 and to 23.5…

Among students in the 2024 ACT-tested graduating class, over 374,000 took the PreACT 8/9® or PreACT test before taking the ACT. This issue brief compares the ACT scores and college enrollment rates for students who took a test from the PreACT Suite of Assessments versus those who did not. The brief also examines average PreACT-to-ACT gain scores…

Background: Traditionally, SREE has traditionally focused on examining the effects of educational interventions with rigorous causal analysis. However, studies of racial/ethnic inequities in education do not always lend themselves to experimental or even quasi-experimental designs. Further, well formulated descriptive studies can provide crucial…

There is growing evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic had a large and negative impact on student learning. This dissertation explores the effect of the pandemic on one of the most vulnerable student subgroups: English Learners (ELs). In this work I examine existing disparities among subgroups of ELs, and the different ways the pandemic has impacted…

This paper investigates lost education time during the COVID-19 pandemic in England. We look at the general factors affecting rates of absence during different stages of the pandemic and the consequences of specific policy guidance. Our evidence shows that pupil absence was strongly linked to socioeconomic factors, with pupils in schools in more…

One of the categories of failing public schools is turnaround schools, which requires effective school leadership and teachers to improve student achievement scores. However, the impact of principals' self-efficacy beliefs in successfully turning around failing schools is unknown. The purpose of this research was to investigate principal…

Using a dataset of over 16 million students who took the ACT® test, we examined occupation choice trends from 2012 to 2023. Students increasingly were undecided or selected occupations in Finance, Computer and Information Sciences, and Math/Quantitative areas. Students decreasingly chose Pharmacy, Communications, Visual and Performing Arts, and…

The Latinx population is currently the largest ethnic minority group in the USA. Moreover, studies demonstrate that Latinx youth are at a higher risk for exposure to community violence and for negative school outcomes compared to their non-Latinx white peers. Though more attention has been devoted to understanding negative school outcomes, there…