Richard Allington reviews the nature of the reading achievement gap between students from low-income and high-income families, concluding that the limited access to children's books experienced by children from low-income families lies at the base of the problem. The fact that children from low-income families lose reading achievement every summer…

Teachers with less than 5 years of teaching experience in low socioeconomic status schools are more likely to leave education than those who have taught in a higher socioeconomic school, often leaving schools in low socioeconomic areas struggling to fill vacancies and to keep a full teaching staff. Many students are high-risk if they attend a…

Community colleges have a long history of being the first college that low-income students attend. These colleges have a lower cost of tuition and accept students who are not prepared to attend a four-year college or who do not meet the admission requirements. Since the creation of The Tennessee Promise the number of middle-class students…

We utilize a difference-in-difference design to examine the effect of adopting a statewide promise program on the enrollment of community college students across socio-economic status. Limited by a small sample size for treated units, we find inferential evidence that the adoption of a state-wide, last-dollar promise program for community colleges…

In 2015, Tennessee launched Tennessee Promise (TN Promise), one of the most comprehensive and well-funded statewide free-college scholarship programs in the country. To support TN Promise students, and especially those from the lowest-income households, tnAchieves, a key partner facilitating all non-financial components of TN Promise, implemented…

We examined how performance-based funding (PBF) for higher education institutions in Tennessee, Ohio, and Indiana affects bachelor's degree completion, admission practices, and the enrollment of underserved students. Utilizing data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, we employed an event study analysis, in addition to a…

In-person college advising programs generate large improvements in college persistence and success for low-income students but face numerous barriers to scale. Remote advising models offer a promising strategy to address informational and assistance barriers facing the substantial majority of low-income students who do not have access to…

This retrospective cohort study explores the effect of STEM integrated instruction on student academic outcomes in elementary reading and mathematics. Teachers and students in a Middle Tennessee suburban school district participated in this study to analyze these relationships. The two participating schools were similar in demographics and were…

In this paper, TNTP reveals five interconnected factors of mobility that young people need in order to thrive: a strong academic foundation, career-connected learning, opportunities to build social capital, personal support in their lives, and civic engagement in their community. These five factors do not work in isolation. Instead, they must be…

For decades, college tuition costs have been skyrocketing, yet state financial aid has failed to meet the increasing economic needs of college students -- leaving many young people with the choice of bridging the financial gap by taking out student loans or not attending college at all. This pressing issue of rising college tuition is not just a…

The Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K Program (TN-VPK) is statewide full-day program that gives priority to children from low-income families. A regression-discontinuity design with a statewide probability sample of 155 TN-VPK classrooms and 5,189 children participating across two pre-K cohorts found positive effects at kindergarten entry with the largest…

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the factors of resilience that educators could replicate to increase the number of socio-economically disadvantaged students that successfully complete high school and continue to become successful adults. An examination of the factors that socio-economically disadvantaged individuals attribute to…

We systematically examine the existing evidence and compute meta-analytic averages for the effects of scaled-up, publicly funded pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programmes in the United States on student mathematics and reading achievement. The analysis is restricted to experimental and quasi-experimental research designs with the highest internal…

The purpose of this study was to measure the possible relationship between Advanced Placement and dual enrollment courses for economically disadvantaged students on 2-year completion rates at public Tennessee higher education institutions. A quantitative, quasi experimental, comparative design was used to analyze secondary data to determine if…

Poverty has an enormous impact on children and their success in school. Children with low socioeconomic status often perform poorly in reading. Poor reading skills often lead to truancy, low rates of high school graduation, low-paying jobs, and cycles of illiteracy in generations of families. Secondary data was collected from the Tennessee…