This study uses survey data from 12,548 parents in seven major cities in mainland China, including 5,850 middle-class parents. Through differential analysis, path analysis, and quantile regression, it examines the relationships between meritocratic educational beliefs, achievement expectation gaps, and educational anxiety. The findings reveal that…

The impact of State policy to combat educational disadvantage with two iterations of DEIS supports has had a positive influence the patterns of achievement among all social groups with some notable improvements across a range of indicators for students in DEIS schools. Notwithstanding these improvements, research and evaluations continue to…

Change is an intentional process and it requires system leaders to be strategic and purposeful with their actions. In order to effect systemic change within their respective districts, system leaders need to be clear about the moral imperative (Fullan, 2004) of equity work. Superintendents will need to be cognizant and empathetic of the students…

Sylvia Wynter's wide-ranging intellectual contributions contain a poetics of being and becoming human that serve to counter the hegemony of developmental psychology and its articulation of the child in teacher education. In this article, I use Wynter's insights to unsettle the universality of this child figure to reveal the child of Man, a…

Over the past 20 years, both charter schools and pre-kindergarten education have taken on increasingly prominent roles in the schooling of America's children. Charter schools in 43 states now serve more than 2.6 million students--roughly six percent of all students attending public schools. More than two-thirds of four-year-olds attend some form…

This article analyzes the factors that explain the gap in educational outcomes between the top and bottom quartile of students in different countries, according to their socioeconomic status. To do so, it uses PISA microdata for 10 middle-income and 2 high-income countries, and applies the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method. Its results show that…

Why do children from some minority groups and children living in poverty do poorly in school when compared to white middle-class children? Researchers have offered a large number of different answers to this question. One of the most popular answers has been based on the notion of "decontextualized language." This article argues that…

Background/Context: Despite decades of research, the persistence of the gap in student achievement between disadvantaged minority students and their middle-class peers remains unexplained. Purpose/Objective: The purpose of the current article is to propose a new model of the achievement gap. Research Design: Data were analyzed from three…

On average, children from low socioeconomic status (SES) homes and children from homes in which a language other than English is spoken have language development trajectories that are different from those of children from middle-class, monolingual English-speaking homes. Children from low-SES and language minority homes have unique linguistic…

The racial achievement gap has persisted in the decades since "Brown v. Board," despite large-scale investment in school reform. Accordingly, some administrators and politicians are reconsidering integration policies as a means of addressing the gap. This study examines one Chicago community's discussion of such integration policy.…

In this study, we collected and analyzed data to examine the extent to which the achievement gap between urban and suburban children extended to their knowledge of digital literacies. Findings indicated that the suburban children outperformed the urban students in each of the performance areas, and that suburban children reported greater…

We compared the learning from playing a linear number board game of preschoolers from middle-income backgrounds to the learning of preschoolers from low-income backgrounds. Playing this game produced greater learning by both groups than engaging in other numerical activities for the same amount of time. The benefits were present on number line…

The purpose of this study is to investigate how teachers perceive their cultural competence. The overarching research questions are "How do teachers perceive their cultural competence and how does their cultural competency impact their professional work?" Individuals' beliefs have a powerful impact on practice. The aim of this study is…

A variety of recent research has shown that the academic achievement gap has been growing between low- and middle-income students. Socioeconomic status has proven to have a large influence on academic attainment as well as the educational opportunities that a child is offered. This paper argues that, because poverty significantly affects children…

The Texas Education Agency's (TEA's) 2017 Annual Report is intended to shine light on the agency's commitment to ensuring that every one of the more than five million public school students in Texas is prepared for success in college, a career or the military. In Texas public schools: (1) Graduation rates are at an all-time high and put Texas in…