Background: Magnet schools emerged during the 1960s as part of an effort to desegregate schools across the United States. Their primary purpose is to provide appealing educational settings to induce voluntary desegregation through parental choices (George & Darling-Hammond, 2021). Some of these magnet schools operate at a regional level to…

Background: Early care and education (ECE) has lasting, positive effects on children's school readiness (Phillips et al., 2018; Yoshikawa et al., 2013). Over the past several decades, access to city or state-funded prekindergarten (pre-K) has increased considerably (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2023) with well-documented, positive impacts on child…

Background: Early math knowledge is the strongest predictor of later academic achievement (Duncan et al., 2007), but math achievement gaps that are present during preschool prior to kindergarten entry (Starkey & Klein, 2008) persist in elementary school. This is especially true for young children who are very low-performing in math relative to…

The negative impact of COVID-19 on students persists three years after the onset of the pandemic. A substantial body of research shows that students have yet to recover to their learning trends before the pandemic (Callen et al. 2023, Lewis & Kuhfeld 2023, Cohodes et al., 2022). This suggests that students face a lengthy road to recovery, and…

Background: Early care and education (ECE) quality has been a topic of discussion for several decades (Burchinal, 2018; Mashburn et al., 2008; NICHD ECCRN, 2002). The structure-process-child outcomes theory proposes that structural features (e.g., teacher education, class size) of quality predict process quality (e.g., teacher-child interactions),…

Summary: In spite of a large literature on the causal effects of financial aid, the impact of funding on college outcomes remains an area of ongoing research with important unanswered questions. Studying the impact of financial aid presents the ongoing challenge of how to identify causal effects, as aid receipt is rarely random and at least partly…

Background/Context: Sometimes students with the academic credentials to attend more selective colleges enroll in a less selective institution or do not enroll at all, a phenomenon known as undermatching (Bowen et al., 2009; Roderick et al., 2011; Smith et al., 2013; Rodriguez, 2015). Undermatching is associated with lower graduation rates and…

Background: Community colleges have the potential to be powerful vehicles for social mobility in the United States. As institutions with tuition rates that are a fraction of the cost of four-year public and private colleges, they are a critical resource for students looking for a relatively less expensive and more flexible option to attain a…

Background: Poverty-related disparities in school readiness are well documented (Dreyer, 2020). Increasing cognitively stimulating parenting practices can contribute greatly to addressing such disparities, and therefore represent a key modifiable target for preventive interventions beginning early in life (Brooks-Gunn & Markman, 2005).…

Background/rationale: There is clear evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic had significant negative effects on the learning and development of school-age children in the United States, with disproportionate impacts on children from racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically marginalized groups (Irwin et al., 2022). There is less consistent evidence…

Future Forward (FF) is an early primary program that leverages both one-on-one tutoring and parent engagement to develop the literacy skills of struggling readers. In 2010, FF was awarded an i3 grant, under the name of SPARK, to develop and test its impact in seven Milwaukee Public Schools primarily serving low-income Black and Latinx students. In…

Study after study has demonstrated that postsecondary success involves a range of factors from neighborhood context to family history to individual aspiration (Kim & Rifelj, 2021). Kauffman Scholars Incorporated (KSI), a post-secondary scholarship program based in Kansas City, understands these factors and has tailored its programming…

Background: Gaps between dual language learners (DLLs) and monolingual English-speaking children have been reported at kindergarten entry, and many DLL children are classified as long-term English learners, having less access to the general curriculum in the upper grades (NASEM, 2017). The supposed underperformance of DLLs might be due to the…

Background/Context: Many students in the United States need access to effective writing instruction, with some requiring intensive intervention. Results from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) in writing over the past 25 years revealed that most students in the U.S. have yet to attain a proficient level of written expression…

This study examined the efficacy of the TELL preschool curriculum for promoting the acquisition of oral language and early literacy skills in preschool children from low-income families. National assessment results indicate a sustained and persistent achievement gap in the reading skills of children from more- versus less-advantaged backgrounds…