Rendering visible African immigrants' shared and differing experiences of civic learning and action, the authors present findings from in-depth semi-structured interviews with second- and 1.5-generation African immigrants in New York City. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework of African immigrant identities constructions and civic…

In this study, I employ geospatial techniques to assess the impact of school attendance zone "gerrymandering" on the racial/ethnic segregation of schools, using a large national sample of 15,290 attendance zones in 663 districts. I estimate the effect of gerrymandering on school diversity and school district segregation by comparing the…

Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, this study examines the association between high school socioeconomic segregation and student attainment outcomes and the mechanisms that mediate those relationships. The results show that socioeconomic segregation has a strong association with high school graduation and college enrollment.…

A district-level reform model created by the Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education (CDDRE) provided consultation with district leaders on strategic use of data and selection of proven programs. Fifty-nine districts in seven states were randomly assigned to CDDRE or control conditions. A total of 397 elementary and 225 middle schools were…

For decades, policymakers and researchers have struggled to understand the reasons that schools in disadvantaged contexts have relatively more trouble responding successfully to reform demands. This analysis extends theory regarding the challenges of school change in disadvantaged contexts by illustrating how the internal resources that schools…

Over the past three decades, American high school students' course taking has rapidly intensified. Between 1982 and 2004, for example, the proportion of high school graduates who earned credit in precalculus or calculus more than tripled. In this article, the authors investigate the consequences of mathematics curricular intensification for social…

The 2010 Census revealed the extent to which today's metropolitan areas are growing increasingly diverse. At the forefront of this change are schools. Yet, research on school context continues to rely upon a traditional, cross-sectional bifurcation that designates schools as either diverse or not. This classification may be especially inaccurate…

In this paper we analyze longitudinal data from a nationally representative panel of college entrants to test and compare several theoretical explanations of college degree attainment and noncompletion. So far, relatively little emphasis has been placed on determining the relative and combined predictive power of competing explanations or…

In this analysis, the authors explore the relationship between the social context of high schools and school-to-school variation in tracking policies. The authors consider three explanations for the implementation of highly elaborated tracking systems: opportunity hoarding, status competition, and a technical-functional explanation. Building on…

This study examined the relationship between structure and support in the high school climate and suspension rates in a statewide sample of 199 schools. School climate surveys completed by 5,035 ninth grade students measured characteristics of authoritative schools, defined as highly supportive, yet highly structured with academic and behavioral…

This study examines trends in American students' growth trajectories in reading and math achievement over the past three decades. Drawing upon multiple sources of national assessment data, cohort analyses provide new evidence on the stability and change of national academic growth curves. The emerging trends imply a tripartite pattern where…

This article reports on a study of teachers at one reforming high school. Though it is not their task to debate No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the authors locate their investigation inside the current policy context to which NCLB is attached. Specifically, they present their analysis through the organizational behavior lens of threat rigidity to…

This study addressed two questions: (a) Do different forms of campus racial diversity contribute uniquely to students' learning and educational experiences when they are simultaneously tested utilizing multilevel modeling? (b) Does a campus where students take greater advantage of those diversity opportunities have independent positive effects on…

Theories often assume that schools in communities with high violence also have high rates of school violence, yet there are schools with very low violence in high violence communities. Organizational variables within these schools may buffer community influences. Nine "atypical" schools are selected from a national database in Israel. Three years…

This article first presents the conceptual framework of the "improved" school finance. This approach clarifies that effective school resources include compound resources, complex resources, and abstract resources in addition to the simple resources usually included in production functions. The implications of this approach are then explored with…