Despite successive policy interventions, students' socio-economic status continues to strongly predict educational outcomes. Many schools aspire to 'close' this 'gap'. This paper presents an ethnographic study of a group of Primary schools in predominantly white working-class areas in the Midlands of England. Generating ethnographic data through…

Prior research has discussed high school counselors' role in students' experience, but counselors' understandings of their work and of students has received little commentary. We interviewed counselors in a high-poverty, low-performing urban school district in which two structural elements shape how counselors make sense of their work. First,…

As the 2020-21 school year opens amid the COVID-19 pandemic's disruption, this third and final installment of Quality Counts 2020 delivers a data-driven portrait of the nation's school system along with A-F grades and rankings for each state on a wide range of academic, school finance, and socioeconomic indicators. This report also includes an…

This publication marks the fourth edition of the Context and Performance (CAP) Report Card for Michigan elementary and middle schools, published every two years since 2013. The goal is to compare Michigan schools' relative performance by factoring in the role student poverty plays in affecting academic achievement. The CAP Report Card uses…

New Mexico is home to nearly 70,000 infants and toddlers. New Mexico families are the state's strongest asset, yet current policies aren't meeting their needs. Children's growth and development are shaped by early life experiences. Good health, secure and stable families, and positive early learning environments foster children's physical,…

As South Africa transitioned from apartheid to democracy, changes in the political landscape, as well as educational agendas and discourse on both a national and international level, shaped successive waves of curriculum reform over a relatively short period of time. Using South Africa as a germane example of how curriculum and pedagogy can…

In January 2017, Trellis launched the Financial Security Study (FSS) to shed light on a broad set of questions related to students' basic needs and academic experiences. Working with 11 institutions in Texas and Florida from late January to October of 2017, researchers interviewed 72 students every 30 days or so to discuss their recent experiences…

Few published studies have examined the interaction between community violence exposure, academic engagement, and parental involvement, despite theory suggesting that these three domains of development are interrelated during adolescence. This study had two related objectives: (a) to assess the temporal ordering of the relation between community…

Beginning teachers enter a profession that places particularly challenging demands on novice practitioners. The New Teacher Center's (NTC) induction model provides intensive, instructionally focused coaching to teachers during their first two years in the classroom, in-depth training for induction mentors, a suite of tools to guide coaching…

Background/Context: Despite increasing school enrollment, significant literacy gaps persist in developing countries, with many children unable to read by age 10. This paper evaluates "M'ap Li Net Ale," a comprehensive intervention aimed at improving early-grade reading skills in Haiti, a context characterized by limited government…

This study proposes a local theory called "Inside-Outside" to strengthen a deprived school microsystem. The theory aims to reduce the cycle of ignorance in schools with poor infrastructure facilities, large groups of students, located in high-crime areas, children from low-income families with low levels of schooling, and families unable…

Lower academic achievement can lead to high dropout rates, especially for students in poverty. With respect to the topic of school size, whether large-size or small-size schools are better with respect to student achievement, is an ongoing argument. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the degree to which differences might be present…

Families of struggling students, this teacher in a high-poverty school knows, feel defensive and hurt when communications with their child's school focus mainly on that child's deficits. This is especially true for families from poverty or immigrant backgrounds--and affirming the latter families is important in the current climate of hostility…

This study analyzed the debt profile of low-income households before and after the Great Recession using the 2007, 2010, and 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). We used Heckman selection models to investigate three debt characteristics: (a) the amount of debt, (b) debt-to-income ratio, and (c) debt delinquency. Before and after the Great…

Given the potential lifelong implications of exclusionary discipline sanctions on students' educational outcomes (Skiba & Rausch, 2006), it is critical for those who are responsible for student discipline, mainly assistant principals, to reflect on their role as disciplinarians. The purpose of this multiple case study was to examine how…