A recent report from the Progressive Policy Institute examines the impact of charter schools on the achievement of students who remain enrolled in traditional district schools. It is centered around a graph that depicts a strong positive relationship between the percentage of students enrolled in charter schools and decreases in the achievement…

Tracking early in the school career can significantly influence a student's educational path. Using data from a Dutch cohort study linked with administrative records, we examine the gap in track recommendation between students from different socio-economic groups at the end of primary school. We find that students whose parents are not tertiary…

Since 2011, Mississippi has significantly improved its students' literacy rates on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP). However, little attention has gone to understanding how and if, amid such tremendous progress, Mississippi is closing the gap in literacy proficiency…

Because of poverty, many children do not receive adequate prenatal care, nutrition, or early childhood education. These inequities combine to ensure that many students enter school with considerably less academic content knowledge and skills for learning than their peers. Teachers and schools did not create these gaps, but they must address them.…

MDRC's Equity Collaborative researched ways that MDRC can more fully measure equity both as a condition and an outcome within studies that are focused on education. They reviewed literature about ways that other researchers, including some in other fields, have approached these questions. The review suggests that most measures used in social…

A significant academic achievement gap has existed for many decades between high- and low-income students in America's schools (Reardon & Portilla, 2016). Of the many solutions proposed to eliminate the poverty gap, early education has shown promising results (Connors, Morris, & Friedman-Krauss, 2015). Eliminating the achievement gap…

Within scientific debate on post-digital and education, we present a position paper to describe a research project aimed at the design of a predictive model for students' low achievements in mathematics in Italy. The model is based on the INVALSI data set, an Italian large-scale assessment test, and we use decision trees as the classification…

COVID-19 led to school closures and emergency remote learning. This paper analyzes school closures during the pandemic using a unique data base. The determinants of the duration of school closures estimates were used to instrument school closures -- stringency of lockdown and vaccination -- and causally estimate the impact of duration on learning.…

This qualitative multi-case study explored the experiences of nine women serving as presidents of community and technical colleges in seven different Midwestern states to understand how they serve students with an increasingly diverse background and ultimately work to close the education opportunity gap. The data collection process consisted of…

Despite the attempts by lawmakers to legislate a closing of the achievement gap, persistent gaps in performance for students based on ethnicity, race, economic level, disability, and first language persist throughout public schools in the United States. Occasionally, a principal will receive attention for raising the performance of minoritized…

This quantitative study provides an in-depth look at the effectiveness of preschool participation while examining other factors that impact school readiness. The five research questions focused on preschool participation or non-participation, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and school community identity. The researcher conducted…

Principals' roles have been transformed from solely managerial and now include instructional leadership. Principals were formerly responsible for hiring teachers, communicating the vision and mission for the school, and overseeing the daily operations. Currently, the primary focus of school principals is student achievement for all students. The…

With the increased use of technology in the world today, the realm of education has not been immune. Schools around the country have implemented expensive one-to-one device programs with little research-based evidence that they are beneficial for student achievement. With an increased focus on student achievement for federal and state…

This report looks at the progress made during secondary school of young people from different backgrounds who were in the top third of attainers at the end of primary school. High attaining pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds have the best chance of becoming socially mobile, and "Social Mobility: The Next Generation" will explore,…

Research indicates that the achievement gap in reading between typical and dyslexic readers is already evident in first grade and persists through adolescence. However, it is not known whether this reading gap persists into adult life. In this report we use an epidemiologic sample of 312 children (typical readers = 246; dyslexic readers = 66),…