The opportunity gap continues to widen in the U.S. education setting due to the ever-growing diversification of student populations resulting in part from increasing numbers of BIPOC students in schools. Meanwhile, most educators continue to be White middle-class females. In this study, fourth- and fifth-grade students at a K-8 charter school were…

Racial equity in education is often framed around "closing the achievement gap," but many scholars argue this frame perpetuates deficit mindsets. The "opportunity gap" (OG) frame has been offered as an alternative to focus attention on structural injustices. In a preregistered survey experiment, I estimate the effects of…

Achievement gaps still remain even though many institutions have invested in efforts to close them. Some institutions have benefited from the use of data analytics, yet may be unaware of whether they are reinforcing institutional and social behavior that may be increasing or maintaining achievement gaps. Focusing efforts on cultivating learning…

Brief, targeted self-affirmation writing exercises have recently been offered as a way to reduce racial achievement gaps, but evidence about their effects in educational settings is mixed, leaving ambiguity about the likely benefits of these strategies if implemented broadly. A key limitation in interpreting these mixed results is that they come…

This study aims to examine the motivational profiles of Malay students in Singapore-based self-regulated learning framework (Pintrich & De Groot, 1990) and self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985). The sample consisted of 740 secondary school students from 24 tuition centres for Malay students only. The students were from three…

Low-socioeconomic status (SES), minority, and male students perform worse than their high-SES, non-minority, and female peers on standardized tests. This paper investigates how within-school differences in school quality contribute to these educational achievement gaps. Using individual-level data on the universe of public-school students in…

Brief, targeted self-affirmation writing exercises have recently been offered as a way to reduce racial achievement gaps, but evidence about their effects in educational settings is mixed, leaving ambiguity about the likely benefits of these strategies if implemented broadly. A key limitation in interpreting these mixed results is that they come…

Selective attention, the ability to enhance the processing of particular input while suppressing the information from other concurrent sources, has been postulated to be a foundational skill for learning and academic achievement. The neural mechanisms of this foundational ability are both vulnerable and enhanceable in children from lower…

In 2004, the pattern in academic pathways for high school students in the USA showed that students were completing more demanding mathematics courses. Despite the upward pattern in advanced-level mathematics course-taking, disparities among racial/ethnic groups persisted between 1982 and 2004. Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of…

Despite the multifaceted causes of educational disparities, schools' responsibility for reducing inequality undergirds American ideals. Educators operate as street-level bureaucrats to accomplish this equalizing work. Surprisingly, we know little about how teachers think about inequality or enact strategies to combat it, even though their…

Many African American children make use of African American English (AAE) in their everyday lives, and face academic barriers when introduced to Standard American English (SAE) in the classroom. Research has shown that students who can adapt and use SAE for academic purposes demonstrate significantly better test scores than their less adaptable…

There are ethnic group differences in academic achievement among Australian students, with Aboriginal students performing substantially below and Asian students above their peers. One factor that may contribute to these effects is societal stereotypes of Australian Asian and Aboriginal students, which may bias teachers' evaluations and influence…

Participation in society is increasingly dependent on educational achievement. Accordingly, society as a whole is committing more resources to education to prevent the adverse outcome of students moving through the school system only to emerge without the knowledge and skills that they might be expected to attain. In this paper, we explore the…

The extent to which differences in family background characteristics explain differences in learning outcomes between children captures the extent of equality in educational opportunities. This study uses large-scale data on literacy and numeracy outcomes for children of school age across East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda) to investigate the…

How working conditions, personal characteristics, and school factors influence teacher recruitment and retention is an oft-studied topic in the field of education finance and policy. Through decades of research, it has become increasingly clear that teachers respond to a set of monetary and non-monetary factors when making decisions in the teacher…