Speaking in front of the Education Writers Association, Secretary Betsy DeVos said that decades of reform efforts and increased social spending, both inside and outside of schools, "hasn't ultimately improved anything for any students, particularly not for the most vulnerable students." This seems to be a standard refrain from DeVos, and…

Hart and Risley's (1995) concept of a "word gap" (aka "language gap") is widely used to describe inferior cognitive development and lower academic achievement as by-products of the language patterns of families from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. In recent decades, this line of deficit research has proliferated and…

The Achieve Together Bournemouth Partnership ("the Partnership") was a pilot collaboration between Teach First, Teaching Leaders, and The Future Leaders Trust. It was a new initiative that aimed to work with primary and secondary schools and the wider community in two socially deprived areas of Bournemouth (Boscombe and West Howe) to…

Policymakers and professional educators attempt to be good stewards of public funds while simultaneously raising expectations for student outcomes that reflect academic excellence in the public school system. The purpose of this study was to determine the efficiency of Texas public school districts and the factors influencing the inefficiency of…

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the extent to which differences might be present in discipline consequence assignments by student demographic characteristics in Texas middle schools. In the first investigation, the degree to which discipline consequence assignments differed by the degree of student economic…

The members of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southwest's Texas English Learners Research Alliance requested this project because they were interested in learning more about the participation of current English learner students in gifted and talented (GT) programs in Texas, and how their participation compared with that of former English…

This essay analyzes the graphic novel "In Real Life" as an example of Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang's intention to raise young people's awareness about gender and economic disparities within the gaming industry. Broadly, "In Real Life" combats the pervasive cultural anxiety that Jane McGonigal challenges in her book "Reality…

Universities are required to adopt "fair" student admission practices, yet understandings of fairness in student selection are contested. This paper uses an analysis of the admission policies of Australia's public universities to critically examine the use and application of notions of fairness. A further analysis of enrolment data is…

We recruited 20 community members in Ido Local Government Area, Oyo state and Yewa Local Government Area, Ogun state in Nigeria to explore experiences and perceptions of Internet access and computer use. Face-to-face interviews were conducted using open-ended questions to collect qualitative data regarding accessibility of information and…

The authors of this quantitative study measured and compared the academic language development and conceptual understanding of fifth-grade economically disadvantaged English language learners (ELL), former ELLs, and native English-speaking (ES) students as reflected in their science notebook scores. Using an instrument they developed, the authors…

Some states have created science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) schools to encourage student interest and enhance student proficiency in STEM subjects. We examined a set of STEM schools serving disadvantaged students to see whether these students were more likely to take and pass advanced science and mathematics classes than…

There is a longstanding debate about whether helping welfare recipients quickly find work or helping them to first obtain some basic education and training better improves their economic well-being. This brief contributes to the debate by presenting long-term findings from three sites in the seven-site National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work…

Many states have implemented or expanded state-funded prekindergarten programs in the last decade, encouraged by claims about the benefits that can be expected and the importance of early experiences for children's development, especially for economically disadvantaged children. However, there is remarkably little methodologically adequate…

Swimming is considered by many to be a significant form of physical activity with many health benefits. Few opportunities exist for African American youth to participate in programs focused on providing developmentally appropriate swim instruction, due in part to a lack of aquatic facilities and programs in urban schools and communities. In an…

This study is an attempt to investigate the impact of educational facilities of a school on various aspects of self-efficacy, confidence, and character building of the underprivileged people in Dera Jutta, a village in Southern Punjab. Trust for Rural Uplift and Community Education (TRUCE) was initiated in the year 2000, and under its auspices,…