In "School Communities of Strength," Peter W. Cookson, Jr., lays out a blueprint for providing equitable educational opportunities for students from all socioeconomic strata, and particularly for the five million American children who live with the extreme material hardship known as deep poverty. This work issues an urgent call to action…

In this study on educational change in Pennsylvania from 1790 to 1838, I reexamine the history of how the state established its common school system, the predecessor to the state's public school system. In doing so, I identify a series of three leaders, argue that poverty was the primary catalyst for educational reform, and explain the nature of…

In low- and middle-income countries, private schools account for 20 percent of all primary enrollment and are rapidly gaining ground. In Pakistan, the number of private schools rose to more than 70,000 by 2015, up from 3,000 in 1982; by 2015, these schools educated 34 percent of Pakistani children enrolled in primary schools. This growth in…

What can the federal government do to help ensure that the public schools attended by children living in poverty have enough resources to serve their students? In this brief, we describe existing federal efforts to support education spending in high-poverty districts, discuss their limitations, and suggest alternative approaches for federal…

Faced with the problem of how to measure the magnitude of economic disadvantage in the populations served by schools or districts, researchers addressing school finance topics have invariably turned to the fraction of students eligible for free- or reduced-lunches (FRPL). But the facile dependence on FRPL may be problematic. A large and growing…

This paper illuminates the direct and profound implications of urban marginalisation on educational decisions. Using survey and interview data from Mumbai, we trace the distinct profiles of families who select public, private, and aided schools. Our effort to look closely at the distinct lives of these families and our conceptual framing, drawing…

Purpose: As US suburbs experience profound demographic shifts, scholars have expressed concern of rising segregation among suburban public schools. We extend this work by examining exposure to poverty by race and racial differences in exposure to economic disadvantage in the wake of the Great Recession across a typology of suburban neighborhoods…

The purpose of the study was to examine if a relationship exists between productive giftedness and social justice leadership in leaders of high-poverty schools. The following research question guided this study: Is there a relationship between productive giftedness and social justice leadership in leaders of high-poverty schools? In the study, 113…

This correlation, quantitative, non-experimental, ex-post-facto study examined the relationship of the percentages of students that were identified as being from high poverty districts and the rate of students identified as eligible for services under Individual with Disability Act (IDEA). To do this, 188 randomized elementary public-school…

Efforts to attract and retain effective educators in high-poverty public schools have had limited success. Dallas ISD addressed this challenge with information produced by its evaluation system to offer large, compensating differentials to highly effective teachers willing to work in its lowest-achievement schools. The Accelerating Campus…

It has only recently become possible to assess librarian staffing at school level, due to the long interval between the two most recent datasets from NCES's periodic sample survey of schools. In 2023, the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) released long-awaited 2020-21 school-level data--the first from that survey since 2015-16. These…

Improving equity of education funding is a key to addressing social injustices in education. Weighted student funding systems are a relatively novel approach a number of large urban and suburban districts have used to try to improve the equity of school funding. In a weighted student funding (WSF) system, the dollars distributed to schools are…

The purpose of this was to examine the relationship between Mississippi public school district per pupil funding disaggregated by funding source (total, federal, state, and local) and student academic achievement gaps within districts based on poverty and race. Pearson's correlational coefficient was used to assess the relationship across 139…

Dominican-born children of Haitian descent are frequently excluded from the public education system in the Dominican Republic. Barriers to participation include poverty, discriminatory government policies, and structural barriers within school settings. Females of Haitian descent face additional barriers due to gender discrimination. The current…

This study examined the performance of Title I elementary schools in South Carolina from the 2017-2018 school year to the 2021-2022 school year. The academic performance of each Title I school in the study was evaluated by examining data from the South Carolina College and Career Ready Assessment (SC READY). It also investigated the effect of the…