Background/Context: In its pursuit for equal opportunity for all students, the field of civic education has largely ignored a significant segment of the school population: students with disabilities (SWD). While numerous studies have documented the benefits of high-quality civic learning for youth, these benefits are not equally distributed among…

Background/Context: Although dual enrollment (DE) programs have indicated positive impact on various high school and postsecondary outcomes, access to DE programs remains unequal; historically marginalized students are less likely than other students to attempt college credits in high school. Despite DE being a widely adopted program at the state…

Background/Context: The sense of belonging to a school is important for students, in terms of various short- and long-term developmental and academic outcomes. The inequities in the sense of school belonging among Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students may reveal a severe lack of opportunities or serious process gaps for these…

Background/Context: Chronic school absenteeism is a pervasive problem across the US; in early education, it is most rampant in kindergarten and its consequences are particularly detrimental, often leading to poorer academic, behavioral and developmental outcomes later in life. Though prior empirical research has identified a broad range of…

Background/Context: The underrepresentation of students from lower socioeconomic status (LSES) backgrounds among college graduates with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees, and consequently in STEM occupations, is a concern with respect to reducing, perpetuating, or increasing social inequality. The loss of their…

Background: Private schools have a big part in the educational landscape in the United States, both in terms of the number of students they educate and in the number of resources they command. That said, despite expectations to increase equity and access to opportunity for all students, little is known about racial, gender, or socioeconomic…

Background: Schools face pressure to promote equitable student outcomes as the achievement gap continues to persist. The authors examine different ways in which social capital has been conceptualized as well as prior theory and research on its formation and consequences. While some theoretical and empirical work conceptualizes social capital as a…

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/Context: Research has documented the benefits of family and parental involvement in children's schooling, both developmentally and across domains. Classroom teachers play pivotal roles in establishing and maintaining home--school partnerships because of their sustained contact with children. Despite this, few studies have examined…

Background/Context: The United States is facing a shortage of domestically prepared STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) professionals, yet many high school graduates find they are not sufficiently prepared for college-level work in STEM subjects. Dual enrollment STEM courses count for both high school and college credit,…

Background: For many years now, there have been many job vacancies in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), but not enough workers to fill these vacancies. Much attention has been given to understanding and changing this situation in our country. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to address this dilemma by understanding…

Background/Context: Students, classrooms, teachers, and schools form hierarchical units of any schooling system that compete for, say, educational resources and sometimes blame one another for the failure to meet a certain societal goal. Little educational research exists that separates competing effects on schooling outcomes across these…

Background: School leaders are challenged by the relatively limited supply and high turnover of qualified secondary school mathematics teachers. In response, policy makers and teacher educators have developed various pathways and incentives to recruit, train, place, and support highly qualified mathematics teachers to work in hard-to-staff…

Background/Context: Racial disparities in school discipline represent a longstanding injustice in U.S. schools. Students of color, particularly Black students, are systematically subjected to harsher school disciplinary actions compared with their peers. A growing body of evidence demonstrates the severity of the problem and the negative…

Background/Context: Scholars have attributed the underperformance of U.S. students relative to students in other high-income countries to unequal access to high-quality educational environments. Poor students are presumed to do disproportionately worse on international achievement tests and, consequently, to pull down the U.S. average. Conversely,…