Histories of 19th-century U.S. education center White experiences, while formal education policy and practice pertaining to Black and Native Americans are treated as marginal phenomena that had little impact on schooling at a national level. Furthermore, current historical framings overwhelmingly analyze Native, White, and Black American education…

We examined changes in school discipline policies and the odds of suspension for students by race in one state. Consistent with previous research findings, Black students continue to be suspended at higher rates than White students. School district code of conduct policies indicated that many school districts have started to incorporate…

Access to high-quality teachers in K-12 schools differs systematically by racial group. This policy brief reviews the academic research documenting these differences and the labor market forces and segregation patterns that solidify them. It also presents new analysis of differential exposure in North Carolina of white, black, and Hispanic…

Utilizing qualitative content analyses of two open-ended questions, the study sought to understand the perspectives of 18 in-service educators regarding White student racial privilege and the ways White teachers can use their power to mitigate those privileges. The findings indicate that teachers are aware of the advantages and privileges afforded…

The purpose of this non-experimental correlational quantitative study was to examine the relationship between race and special education under the disability category of ED for kindergarten through 12th-grade students in four school districts in the greater Houston area. The study had three research questions regarding racial representation, the…

Although school segregation in New York City (NYC) has received a great deal of attention for several decades, the vast majority of contemporary analyses, in the city and elsewhere, exclude private school students. This is mostly due to the fact that formal desegregation efforts have focused on public schools. Yet NYC's enormous private school…

We combine satellite-based pollution data and test scores from over 10,000 U.S. school districts to estimate the relationship between air pollution and test scores. To deal with potential endogeneity we instrument for air quality using: (1) year-to-year coal production variation; and (2) a shift-share instrument that interacts fuel shares used for…

The problem addressed in this study is that zero-tolerance policies impact African-American female students through suspension, expulsions, and law enforcement referrals more than their White counterparts. The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative ex post facto study was to determine if a significant difference exists in the exclusionary…

In K-12 settings, misunderstandings of racial dynamics and color-blind attitudes may stymie teachers from adequately addressing racial discrimination amongst students. This study qualitatively asked if, why, and how pre- and in-service teachers would hypothetically intervene on racial discrimination toward a Black student, and whether color-blind…

Ensuring that the education system works for pupils from all backgrounds is key to the Department of Education's aims. This document collates and contextualises available evidence on outcomes by ethnicity across the school system. Doing so allows for a rounded view of the data in proper context, and overall trends to emerge. Attainment figures…

Many of the most tangible and immediate political conflicts in American's lives occur at the local level. Yet, we lack large-scale evidence on how, why, and where conflict occurs in local governments. In this paper, we present a new dataset of nearly 100,000 videos of school board meetings, and a new measure of local political conflict. We use and…

For the United States to regain the top ranking in the world for college degree attainment, Latinos will need to earn 6.2 million degrees by 2030. To reach the Latino degree attainment goal by 2030, the United States can close the degree completion gap by accelerating Latino completion while increasing for all students and scale up programs and…

In this study, we examine eight social and emotional outcomes (e.g., student engagement, sense of belonging) analyzing differences for students who attend racially diverse schools. Drawing on survey responses from roughly 26,000 students, we find that racially diverse schools are associated with more positive social and emotional outcomes for all…

Common methods of measuring discipline disproportionality can produce contradictory results and obscure base-rate information. In this paper, we show how using multilevel modeling to analyze discipline disparities resolves ambiguities inherent in traditional measures of disparities: relative rate ratios and risk differences. One previous study…

This "Equity by Design" brief is intended for preK-12 school leaders who want to better understand the root causes of inequitable outcomes in their systems. Despite educators' often good intentions to effectively serve all students, there is ample evidence of ongoing disparities negatively impacting students of Color in U.S. schools.…