Background/Context: Almost 100 years ago, John Dewey advocated for a democratic U.S. educational system, one that echoed the tenets of the U.S. Constitution and achieved an ethical ideal by inviting participation of all students. Yet the U.S. educational system continues to stop short of this goal insofar as students of Color--especially those in…

Background: Internships for college students can enhance their grades, skills, and employment prospects, but finding and completing an internship sometimes requires considerable resources. Consequently, before postsecondary institutions consider mandating this high-impact practice, more evidence is needed regarding the various obstacles students…

Background: While illustrations are widely used in international test comparisons, very scant research has been conducted on their design and on their influence on student performance. It is not clear how the features of illustration act in combination supporting students' access to the content of items or increasing their interpretation demands.…

Background/Context: Legal scholars often contrast the litigiousness of contemporary American higher education with a bygone era characterized by near-absolute respect for academic authority. According to this account, a doctrine of "academic deference" insulated colleges until the 1960s, when campus protests and new federal regulations…

Background: African American male students attending U.S. suburban schools remain severely underrepresented in Advanced Placement (AP) programs. A number of structural barriers, including racialized tracking policies; limited referrals from educators and school counselors; conventional AP practices centered on Eurocentric curricula, literature,…

Background/Context: While much has been written about the history of immigration and naturalization in the United States, few scholars have looked at the history of citizenship education and testing. The small body of literature on the subject has primarily focused on World War I-era Americanization efforts and, as such, has excluded later…

Background/Context: This essay is a part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art…