It is no secret that disadvantaged children are more likely to struggle in school. For decades now, public policy has focused on how to reduce the achievement gap between poorer students and more-affluent students. Despite numerous reform efforts, these gaps remain virtually unchanged--a fact that is deeply frustrating and also a little confusing.…

Using a critical theory framework, the article explores emancipatory narratives obtained through a case study of women in rural India. In-depth interviews, focus group conversations, observations, and document analysis highlight the complexity of the subsequent set of challenges facing women as it relates to both the education and empowerment for…

In his 1965 report on the black family, Daniel Patrick Moynihan highlighted the rising fraction of black children growing up in households headed by unmarried mothers. He attributed the increase largely to the precarious economic position of black men, many of whom were no longer able to play their traditional role as their family's primary…

Food assistance programs--including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps), the National School Lunch Program, and the School Breakfast Program--have been remarkably successful at their core mission: reducing food insecurity among low-income children. Moreover, writes Craig Gundersen, SNAP in particular has also been…

Ferguson, like many at-risk suburbs, has largely been lost in discussions of the geography of opportunity. The authors conducted a descriptive epidemiological case study of Ferguson and its surrounding region with a focus on health and education indicators. Drawing from a variety of community data sources, they used geospatial methods to…

Children learning to read and write in rural areas in Southern Africa perform poorly compared to children in urban schools. The poor results of rural schools in national assessments of reading literacy are explained by the deficits of rural areas: poverty, under-resourced schools and under-qualified teachers. Children in rural areas are frequently…

We study a teacher incentive policy in Washington State that awards a financial bonus to National Board Certified Teachers who teach in high-poverty schools. We study the effects of the policy on student achievement and teacher staffing using a regression discontinuity design that exploits the fact that eligibility for the bonus is based on the…

This paper looks at the National Pupil Database for England in terms of variables that could be used by universities to help them assess undergraduate applications. Where a young person is obviously disadvantaged, this can be taken into account in contextualised admissions. Of the indicators available, which give the most accurate assessment of…

This article examines how student movements between traditional public schools (TPSs) and charters--both brick and mortar and cyber--may be associated with both racial isolation and poverty concentration. Using student-level data from the universe of Pennsylvania public schools, this study builds upon previous research by specifically examining…

This paper re-examines the low participation of young people from deprived communities through the lens of the capability approach. A fundamental problem for tackling widening participation is that much of the thinking of policymakers is grounded on the flawed "poverty of aspiration thesis". This paper contends that Sen's [1992.…

This is a study of students from high-poverty backgrounds attending universities in Honduras. Based on a series of individual and focus group interviews, the researchers found students from high-poverty backgrounds face numerous practical challenges in persisting in higher education. Despite these challenges, participants succeeded due to a…

This review is focused on literature documenting the experiences of nondominant and minoritized parents who challenge injustice and inequity in the public schools attended by their children. It interrogates hegemonic approaches to parent involvement favoring dominant groups and silencing efforts of nondominant parents to confront discriminatory…

School dropout is a growing concern in Central America, and in Latin America as a whole, because of its consequences for economic productivity, the inclusiveness of growth, social cohesion, and increasing youth risks. This paper utilizes more than two decades of household survey data to construct a systematic overview of school dropout at the…

The distribution of children in different school-types and regions in Pakistan suggests that access and opportunities in education are not evenly accessible for many children. Segregation at school level is an important concern for equity and social justice because the adverse effects of segregation increase the pre-existing gap in opportunities…

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…