"Excellence gaps" are the disparities in advanced academic performance that exist between student groups. These gaps have important implications for both academic equity and American economic competitiveness, as the most lucrative jobs often go to those who perform at the highest levels. Although considerable work has evaluated how and…

Does student-teacher match quality exist? Prior work has documented large disparities in teachers' impacts across student types but has not distinguished between sorting and causal effects as the drivers of these disparities. I propose a disparate value-added model and derive a novel measure of teacher quality--revealed comparative advantage--that…

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the degree to which differences were present in reading, mathematics, and both subjects college-readiness for English Language Learners who were enrolled in Texas high schools. In the first investigation, the extent to which English Language Learner boys differ in their…

Analyzing the nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), this study examined the cross-sectional and longitudinal disparities in STEM career aspirations at the intersection of gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES). Results indicated that female, Black, Hispanic, and low SES students were less…

There is some disparity in the quality of education among the various races and provinces in South Africa. Since the dawn of democracy in 1994, the government has tried to bridge the gap using quintile categorisation of public schools and its concomitant funding. The categorisation is based on the socioeconomic status of the community in which the…

The purpose of this study was to examine differences between academic and behavioral outcomes for three cohorts of sixth grade boys enrolled at Starlight Middle School, a large, urban school in the Midwest. A comparison was made between pre-, partial, and full intervention data, during three consecutive years of implementation of School-wide…

Among all children under 18 years in the U.S., 43 percent live in low-income families and 21 percent--approximately one in five--lives in a poor family. This means that children are overrepresented among our nation's poor; they represent 23 percent of the population but comprise 33 percent of all people in poverty. Many more children live in…

Students' trajectories into university are often uniquely dependent on school qualifications though these alone are limited as predictors of academic potential. This study endorses this, examining associations between school grades, school type, school performance, socio-economic deprivation, neighbourhood participation, sex and academic…

Background: Although classroom quality is an important consideration, few recent research studies have examined the process and structural quality in publicly funded early childhood education (ECE) and inclusive ECE classrooms. This study provides an important contribution to the literature by comparing two conceptualizations of quality in…

Understanding differences in oral language abilities is vital, particularly for children from low-income homes and minority children who are at an increased risk for academic failure because of differences or deficits in language use or exposure before they enter school. The purpose of this study was to investigate oral language performance,…

There is a lack of knowledge in whether there is a difference in results for students on paper and pencil high stakes assessments and computer-based high stakes assessments when considering race and/or free and reduced lunch status. The purpose of this study was to add new knowledge to this field of study by determining whether there is a…

This study accessed the relationship between race, socioeconomic status, age and the race implicit bias held by middle and high school science teachers in Mobile and Baldwin County Public School Systems. Seventy-nine participants were administered the race Implicit Association Test (race IAT), created by Greenwald, A. G., Nosek, B. A., &…

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of early preparation for postsecondary education and explore the effectiveness of Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP). This comparative case study included 836 students from two cohorts (GEAR UP and Non GEAR UP). We compared high school attendance,…

The purpose of the current study was to examine features of adolescent reading comprehension trajectories and make within-person and between-person analyses of growth that occurs during the high school grades. Racial and socioeconomic group differences of the adolescent reading trajectories were also investigated and compared. This examination…

Overall, children who spend time in full-day kindergarten programs are more likely than children who spend time in half-day kindergarten programs to devote time every day to reading, mathematics, and social studies. Research is inconclusive on longer-term impacts. Trends identified in this report include: (1) since 1977, the percentage of…