American students are far more diverse than their teachers. Some 79 percent of U.S. teachers are white compared to 44 percent of students. As a result, students of color are far less likely to have a same-race teacher than are white students, a phenomenon that has attracted the attention of philanthropists and policymakers alike. Foundations have…

How does reassigning students to create schools that are more socioeconomically and academically diverse affect the distribution of educational opportunity? What are the impacts on students who switch schools as a result of these policies? And how do changes in school assignments affect the students who don't switch schools, but who experience…

Grade inflation is pervasive in American high schools. Is rampant grade inflation cause for concern? How teachers' grading standards affect student success is an empirical question--one that the author addresses in this article in a new study of roughly 350,000 North Carolina students taking Algebra I between 2006 and 2016. The author first…

Communities in Schools is one of the nation's oldest and largest providers of integrated student supports, also known as "wraparound services." Started in New York City in the 1970s, the agency now works with more than 2,300 schools in 25 states and the District of Columbia. The model is straightforward: Communities in Schools recruits,…

When students look back on their most important teachers, the social aspects of their education are often what they recall. Learning to set goals, take risks and responsibility, or simply believe in oneself are often fodder for fond thanks--alongside mastering precalculus, becoming a critical reader, or remembering the capital of Turkmenistan. The…

Does having a teacher of the same race make it more or less likely that students are subject to exclusionary school discipline? In this study, the authors analyze a unique set of student and teacher demographic and discipline data from North Carolina elementary schools to examine whether being matched to a same-race teacher affects the rate at…

Community colleges, with their commitment to open access, admit millions of students each year who are unprepared for college-level work, even though they have earned a high-school diploma. For decades the schools had a built-in base of students attracted to their open doors and relative affordability. But enrollment at public two-year college has…

Caught between extraordinary public expectations and relatively modest constitutional authority, U.S. presidents historically have fashioned all sorts of mechanisms--executive orders, proclamations, memoranda--by which to move their objectives forward. William Howell asserts that under President Barack Obama's administration, presidential…

In 2008, president-elect Barack Obama declared that preparing the nation for the "21st-century economy" required making "math and science education a national priority." Encouraging more students to take advanced classes seems laudable, but concerns have arisen about the ability of many students to complete such course work…

In this study, the author investigates whether the opportunity to attend a school other than a student's assigned neighborhood school reduces criminal activity, especially among disadvantaged youth. Many of the schools chosen by the students were "better" on traditional indicators, such as student test scores and teacher characteristics.…

School start times vary considerably, both across the nation and within individual communities, with some schools beginning earlier than 7:30 a.m. and others after 9:00 a.m. Proponents of later start times, who have received considerable media attention in recent years, argue that many students who have to wake up early for school do not get…

Proposals to reauthorize No Child Left Behind seek to ensure "equitable" access to effective teachers. The U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top fund rewards state plans for "ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals" and for "ambitious yet achievable annual targets to increase the…

Most research on charter schools, and the most intense public debate over their desirability, has focused on the impact of these new schools on the students who attend them. But charter proponents also hope that the threat of students' leaving will spur traditional schools to higher levels of achievement. In the long run, such system-wide…

Mel Levine writes about learning disabilities in a way that sometimes invites satire. The premise of his 2003 book, "The Myth of Laziness," for example, is that a child who appears lazy probably does not lack motivation, but rather suffers from "output failure." Levine, a professor of pediatrics at the University of North…

In this paper, the authors use an extensive student-level data set to evaluate the impact of charter schools in North Carolina on the math and reading performance of students in grades 4 through 8. They address three main questions: Do students attending charter schools in these grades make larger or smaller gains in achievement than they would…