Methods to estimate the causal effects of interventions are increasingly used in clinical medicine, public policy and social science. Using observational data, researchers can obtain causal treatment effect estimates without the ethical risks and time constraints that typically burden randomized experiments. The three studies in this dissertation…

The out-of-school time (OST) field in the United States has a complex history. The push to offer programming reflects a legacy rooted in moral panics about racially minoritized youth. However, this field is populated by community spaces that act as multipurpose sites of culturally sustaining educational practices supporting positive youth…

College student leadership is common learning outcome in American higher education, but it was not until the past decade when researchers began studying college student leadership using critical theories and perspectives. These scholars criticized that current student leadership models and theories have been representative of White, Eurocentric,…

Drawing on notions of transnationalism and transnational funds of knowledge and using a narrative inquiry, this study investigates the experiences of a Korean migrant social studies teacher named Ms. Choi who works with newly arrived students in New York City while maintaining close ties to her home country. I explore how she makes sense of and…

This "Equity by Design" research brief discusses the impact of COVID-19 on school segregation and integration in public schools. COVID-19 raised a lot of discussions already occurring around school choice, which connects to a larger conversation on the purpose of education and it being one of the most important public goods in American…

The Washington, D.C. metro area schools are the fifty-third most segregated in terms of students' economic status and twenty-third most segregated in terms of Black-White separation. This segregation in the District of Columbia's schools undergirds systemic racism, creates social strife, and leaves children unprepared for an increasingly…

This paper draws from the writings of Michel Foucault and his recently reconsidered provocations on race and racialization. Using Foucault's definition of 'internal racism,' race is understood as a complex set of correlations that are employed for the purpose of establishing (ab)normality and exercising various forms of expulsion. Racialization is…

This research presents a qualitative case study of a middle school principal in New York City who made significant progress in creating the opportunity to learn at a school that predominantly serves children of color. The study analyzed the principal's leadership behaviors and decision-making strategies through a series of document reviews,…

Newcomer immigrant adolescents (NIA) represent a particularly vulnerable group in the United States, facing numerous stressors placing them at risk for social-emotional and academic concerns. Schools play a critical role in supporting NIA in the United States. Despite this, insufficient research addressing the needs of this group within schools…

In this ethnographic study, Alexandra Freidus investigates the dilemmas of whiteness that challenge a youth-led campaign for school integration in New York City. Analyzing field observations, interviews, and internal documents, she illustrates the ways whiteness shaped young people's identities as allies and activists, contributed to an…

A major area of critical scholarship within human rights education (HRE) aims to discover HRE's revolutionary potential by questioning its relationship to the global human rights regime. However, the very concept of "human rights violations" remains underexamined. This article analyzes the use and function of human rights violations as…

Drawing from a network case study, this article traces enactments of a letter writing enquiry in one Kindergarten public school classroom in New York City, and in doing so, explores both the affordances and limitations of sociomaterial approaches employed by the researcher towards school literacies. Looking down at one morning meeting revealed…

The Gifted and Talented program in New York City is one of the largest and longest running programs for gifted students in the nation. Yet little is known about its effects on student outcomes. Using student-level administrative data of New York City public school students between the 2010--2011 and 2018-2019 academic years, we studied the effects…

Persistent underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic Statistics degree holders relative to the U.S. population occurs at all levels in post-secondary education, contributing to the underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic Bio/Statisticians. Attempting to address this inequity before the undergraduate level, Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK)'s Bridge…

Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) is a pedagogical approach that has been shown to benefit all students, especially underrepresented minority students and peer leaders in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. In this work, we present results from our study of the impact of PLTL on our peer leaders from a controlled…