Using national data from the National Center for Education Statistics 2011-2012 Schools and Staffing Survey and Common Core of Data, we examined the relationship between K-12 practitioners' risk for stress and the teacher-to-student racial/ethnic congruence. Analyses indicated significant variation in risk for stress by school racial composition…

If there ever was a time for educators to understand the experiences of Latino students, that time is now. Increases in anti-immigration expressions and sentiments and the very real rollback of federal protections have created an unsafe and unsettling environment in this nation and in its schools. One of the greatest resources to help educators…

This study investigates how teachers' perceptions of student problems are affected by school-level student/teacher racial compositions. Utilizing the full spectrum of student/teacher racial compositions, results from nonlinear models show that students, regardless of their individual racial background, will be evaluated partially on the racial…

More work is needed to engage the talents and empower Latino students to reach their full academic potential. We suggest that one potential cause for Latino student underperformance is the underrepresentation of Latino school leaders. Research suggests that school leaders who understand the cultural background and lived experiences of students…

Students benefit from a teacher workforce that represents the full racial/ethnic diversity of the United States. We examine racial/ethnic composition of general education teacher (GET) and special education teacher (SET) workforce using the Schools and Staffing Survey. We find that the teacher workforce continues to be primarily White. In…

Students of color are significantly underrepresented in gifted programs relative to their White peers. Drawing on political science research suggesting that public organizations more equitably distribute policy outputs when service providers share characteristics with their client populations, we investigate whether representation of students of…

This report presents selected findings from the Public School Principal and Private School Principal Data Files of the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is a nationally representative sample survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. School districts associated…

Studies of teacher satisfaction suggest that satisfaction is related to both the racial composition and the organizational structure of the schools in which teachers work. In this article, the authors draw from theories of race and organizations to examine simultaneously the effects of school type (traditional public vs. charter) and racial…

The momentum behind high-quality, voluntary pre-kindergarten is growing dramatically across the country--in families, in communities, and in the halls of academia and government. Thanks to this strong wave of support, state spending on pre-k increased from $2.4 billion to $4.2 billion nationwide between 2002 and 2007. This investment is built upon…