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Artificial intelligence (AI), once a phenomenon primarily in the world of science fiction, has evolved rapidly in recent years, steadily infiltrating into our daily lives. ChatGPT, a freely accessible AI-powered large language model designed to generate human-like text responses to users, has been utilized in several areas, such as the healthcare industry, to facilitate interactive dissemination of information and decision-making. Academic advising has been essential in promoting success among university students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Unfortunately, however, student advising has been marred with problems, with the availability and accessibility of adequate advising being among the hurdles. The current study explores how AI-powered tools like ChatGPT might serve to make academic advising more accessible, efficient, or effective. The authors compiled a list of questions frequently asked by current and prospective students in a teacher education bachelor's degree program in the United States. Then, the questions were typed into the free version of ChatGPT, and the answers generated were explored and evaluated for their content and delivery. ChatGPT generated surprisingly high-quality answers, written in an authoritative yet supportive tone, and it was particularly adept at addressing general and open-ended career-related questions, such as career outlook, in a clear, comprehensive, and supportive manner using plain language. We argue that AI-powered tools, such as ChatGPT, may complement but not necessarily replace human academic advisers and that these tools may very well serve to promote educational equity by empowering individuals from a wide range of backgrounds with the means to initiate effective methods of seeking academic advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling banned mandatory race-based separation of students to different schools, school segregation, and inequality in the United States are rapidly increasing. In this research synthesis, I propose a model for explaining how segregation and inequality are formed in urban and suburban school systems and exacerbated even in the absence of formal segregation policy. The model describes segregation as a component in a triangle of discriminatory education policy processes: segregation, discrimination, and signaling. Connecting these three seemingly distinct policy practices could provide a better explanation for the growing inequality in the U.S. school system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to patterns of educational inequity, many schools implement system-wide behavioral frameworks to reduce exclusionary discipline. School-wide positive behavior supports (SWPBS) is one such framework that seeks to support socially appropriate behavior by enhancing the capacity of schools to implement research-validated practices. However, there remains to be a systematic analysis of the extent to which SWPBS improves educational equity by reducing disparities in exclusionary discipline. The purpose of the systematic review was to evaluate research on the association of SWPBS with exclusionary discipline and racial discipline disproportionality. In total, 42 articles met the full inclusion criteria of a literature search conducted between 2018 and 2020. Study results were mixed regarding whether SWPBS was associated with reductions in exclusionary discipline and only a few studies provided evidence that SWPBS helps reduce exclusionary discipline disproportionality. Limitations of this research signal a need for attention to both data disaggregation and root causes of continued disproportionate discipline practices., (Copyright © 2024 Society for the Study of School Psychology. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In recent decades, racial disparities in K-12 disciplinary outcomes in the United States have garnered considerable attention. Empirical studies have established that schools' discipline policies and practices play an important role; however, the lack of an integrated theoretical framework inhibits the discourse on bias and discrimination as a contributing factor. This study aims to close the gap between theory and empirical evidence by examining the contributors to the racial disparities in disciplinary outcomes through theoretical lenses. Our findings indicate that school discipline approaches that predominantly focus on policing minor and subjective behavior may facilitate racial bias in enforcement. Our results suggest that the racial discipline gap may be the product of the: (a) heightened focus on risk management, (b) cultural and demographic mismatch between the teaching workforce and students, and (c) transmission of dominant values through school discipline policies and practices that are reflective of upper and middle-class norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a classroom‐ready activity for high school or college students involving an investigation of a rich, multivariate data set concerning educational and demographic characteristics of K‐12 schools at the state level in the United States. The data set includes educational characteristics such as per‐pupil revenue and graduation rate along with demographic characteristics such as poverty rate and economic segregation. Analysis of the data set sparks conversations regarding educational disparities for students in the United States and could prompt curiosity about educational disparities in other locations as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1896 to 1954, the "separate but equal" doctrine instituted by the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case reverberated in public education in the United States until its rejection in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision. In this integrative literature review, the authors sought to illuminate examples of progress toward educational equity for African Americans in U.S. K-12 education from 1954 to 2019. To undergird the study, the authors utilized the three standards of educational equity theory (i.e., access, participation, and outcomes) to analyze the relevant literature and to organize our findings. While there has been some progress, findings revealed that shadows of Plessy v. Ferguson remain. Most significantly, African American students f inequities in access to comparable facilities and services as White students, due to discrimination, marginal student support, poor school quality, and lack of political, social, and economic power. This study builds on existing knowledge about the current state of educational equity for African American students in the U.S. K-12 education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy makers have long seen parents and families as key levers for improving U.S. student outcomes and success, and new cross-sector collaborative policy and initiatives provide a promising context for innovations in efforts to engage nondominant families in educational equity reform. Drawing on a lens of equitable collaboration, this study examined the strategies in three organizational efforts to improve family engagement in education within a common cross-sector collaboration initiative in a Western region of the United States. Although conventional approaches persisted amid regular exchanges across organizations, we identified more reciprocal, collective, and relational strategies: (a) parent capacity-building, (b) relationship-building, and (c) systemic capacity-building efforts. Despite promising strategies, the dynamics of implementation in the cross-sector collaborative constrained change and mirrored limitations in family engagement practice and policy. The article concludes with next steps for research, practice, and policy in the journey toward more equitable collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applied science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) coursetaking is becoming more commonplace in traditional high school settings to help students reinforce their learning in academic STEM courses. Throughout U.S. educational history, vocational education has been a consistent focus for schools to keep students on the school-to-career pathway. However, very few studies have examined the role of applied STEM coursetaking in improving schooling outcomes for students with learning disabilities. This is a major missing link as students with learning disabilities tend to exhibit much higher dropout rates than students from the general population. This study examines mechanisms displayed through applied STEM courses and the role they play in helping students with learning disabilities complete high school and transition into college. Using a nationally representative data set of high school students and their full transcripts (i.e., Education Longitudinal Study of 2002), we found that students with learning disabilities who took applied STEM courses significantly increased their educational outcomes in the following ways: lowered chances of dropout, increased math test scores, and increased enrollment in postsecondary education. While the general student population also benefited by taking applied STEM courses, the advantages were greater for those students with learning disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to provide insight to the multiple ways that school leaders resist, avoid, or block LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, queer, and questioning) professional development for their staff and, thus, resist the conversations around school responsibility to these students and families. Research Method: The data presented in this article include interviews and field notes drawn from evaluation studies of the Reduction of Stigma in Schools© professional development program and are related to a single emergent theme. Findings: School leaders who resisted LGBTQ professional development claimed such training was not relevant to their school contexts, the training would attract community backlash, the school board would not approve the training, or school personnel would not be interested in learning about LGBTQ students. Implications: The authors conclude that increasing LGBTQ content in educational leadership training is a necessary step for convincing school leadership that LGBTQ-competence is necessary for creating a positive school climate for all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Scopes Trial was one of the most controversial, widely reported, and well-researched court cases of the twentieth century. However, historians and other researchers have largely ignored the African American community's reaction and response to the trial, leaving out valuable perspectives on this historic event. In this article, the author takes up the question: To what extent did African Americans view the Scopes Trial as an educational issue? The viewpoints of a diverse group of African Americans who participated in the evolution debate are described and analyzed, focusing specifically on newspaper and periodical columnists. In addition, the author examines how African American commentators skillfully connected questions of science and religion to larger goals of educational and racial equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student mobility and school segregation are two important issues with significant equity implications for urban school districts that are often addressed separately. This article examines the relationship between student mobility and school segregation. The findings indicate that more segregated schools typically have smaller within-school achievement gaps, a lower proportion of proficient students, a higher proportion of low-income and minority students, and higher nonstructural mobility rates (especially within-year mobility) than less segregated schools. The results also suggest that, regardless of the timing of school changes, high levels of achievement segregation are a significant predictor of student mobility. Policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Although the overall use of exclusionary discipline has declined with school discipline reforms in the past decade, the benefits of policies and programs are not greater for African American students; hence racial disparities in office discipline referrals (ODRs) and suspensions remain, with a few notable exceptions. • Strategic coordination of various alternative approaches to exclusionary discipline (including policy changes and investments in programs such as Restorative Justice) is critical, as these levers work in tandem to dismantle disparities. • School discipline reforms that lower ODRs for Black students, including programs encompassing culturally responsive practices, enhanced classroom management strategies, or individual coaching, have the potential to reduce racial inequality in suspensions. Racial inequality in exclusionary discipline is one of the salient educational equity challenges facing educational stakeholders in the United States (U.S.). This study synthesizes recent empirical evidence (2010–2022) on the effectiveness of school discipline reforms in the U.S. Although the overall use of exclusionary discipline has declined in the past decade, a growing number of studies indicate that the benefits of policy and programmatic changes are not greater for African American students. Thus, racial disparities in office discipline referrals (ODRs) and suspensions remain, with a few notable exceptions. Several recommendations emerge for educational policymakers and leaders contemplating school discipline reforms that lower ODRs for African American students including: a) rejecting race-neutral school discipline reforms and strategically coordinating various alternative approaches to exclusionary discipline such as policy changes and programmatic investments, b) prohibiting suspensions for attendance-related infractions, c) investing in the fidelity of the implementation of school-based programs such as Restorative Justice and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports and complementing these programs with school mental health, and d) investing in developing an empathic mindset, coaching, and professional development in classroom management and culturally responsive practices for educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study addressed the current policy push to improve students’ college and career readiness (CCR) as manifested within the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and examined CCR policy in the state of Illinois as a case study, noting ways in which provisions for CCR programs prepare all students, including those historically underserved by higher education, to be prepared for education and employment post–high school. Research Methods: A critical analytic approach was undertaken, foregrounding equity. We conducted thematic content analysis of ESSA and Illinois policy, employing a CCR accountability paradigm. Findings: CCR-related content was contained throughout ESSA. Although content varied, themes were identified. Dual enrollment provisions were prominent in ESSA but not the Illinois’ CCR laws; however, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics was emphasized in both. ESSA introduced but did not fully clarify what constitutes a well-rounded education and did not identify particular reporting and accountability provisions, whereas two Illinois’ CCR bills focused on remedial education and the third evidenced a more comprehensive and integrated CCR approach. These findings suggest distinct federal and Illinois’ CCR visions. A more systematic equity focus was evident within ESSA. Implications for Research, Policy, and Practice: ESSA provisions providing new flexibilities to states portend wide variation in emphasis toward, and accountability for, long-standing equity issues. District officials will also likely have substantial flexibility in their administration, design, and implementation of ESSA-funded CCR programming, which may affect educational equity in ways that advantage and disadvantage. We thus provide several cautions and recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on geography of opportunity documents how residential patterns influence students' access to equitable educational opportunities and resources. This scholarship often highlights how geography reinforces educational inequity in urban school districts located in resource-constrained cities. Yet, less research has explored how the geography of educational opportunity and resources plays out in school districts located in fast-growing and opportunity-rich cities. As such, this descriptive analysis uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map the spatial distribution of high schools considered high-quality according to their state accountability rating by race and socioeconomic status in an urban school district located in an opportunity-rich city in the Northeastern U.S. We also examine how district transfer and selective enrollment policies as well as distances to other public and charter high schools rated high-quality influence the geography of educational opportunity. Our findings suggest that spatial arrangements and district policies impact patterns of unequal educational opportunity and resources across the district for children of color who live in low-income communities, despite being located in an opportunity-rich city. This study concludes with implications for policy and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, San Francisco held an unprecedented citywide vote on its public schools' student assignment policy. Proposition H provides a unique opportunity to learn more about the public's desire for 'neighborhood schools,' as compared to their interest in maintaining districtwide desegregation efforts. This paper takes the approach of applying geographic information system tools and regression analysis to understand the relationships between neighborhood, race, income, and attitudes toward student assignment systems. By comparing the election results with demographics and school quality data, we identify patterns of support for the narrowly defeated proposition. Support for a shift toward neighborhood-based schools was higher in census tracts with high-performing schools, more school age children, high median income, or a large fraction of foreign-born residents, and lower in tracts with a high percentage of Latinos. The shifting race- and class-based politics of the city foreshadow expected demographic shifts in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-based organizations have long influenced education reforms, and urban areas are especially vulnerable to community work that transcends racial and economic boundaries. The purpose of this study is to explore how The League of Women Voters of Las Vegas Valley, a mostly White, middle-upper-class women's organization, worked to pursue one of the most prominent urban education reforms in the last half century-school desegregation. Using interview and archival data, this historical case study is theoretically framed by various critical constructs to examine how the organization's racial and economic privileges, and in some cases oppression, coupled with gendered systems of patriarchy and misogyny, influenced the process and outcomes of school desegregation reform in Las Vegas between 1966 and 1972. The organization's intersectional identities afforded them unique opportunities and barriers. Nevertheless, they ultimately compromised on an inequitable policy that burdened Black children and their families for close to 20 years. These findings suggest that the intersectional identities of organizations can both empower and hinder community engagement in education reform. Because interests often diverge, organizations undertaking education reform should do the collective work necessary to address unintended policy consequences of education reform efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between shared governance and one school district's (in)ability to advance educational equity. Specifically, we consider the district's policies, discourse, and practice around equity within the context of site-based management and shared decision making. We suggest that if equity is indeed a major district responsibility, then it seems inconsistent to leave equity at the mercy of shared governance and occasional externally-imposed mandates because most individual school leaders and educators are not currently taking up this agenda or implementing changes that would result in equitable education. Thus, our work suggests that progress toward educational equity may best be achieved through top-down, directive leadership in districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I explore the educational equity implications of three popular ideological positions that drive teachers’ and teacher educators’ understandings of, and responses to, poverty and economic injustice in schools: deficit ideology, grit ideology, and structural ideology. The educator’s ideological position, I illustrate, determines their understandings of conditions such as socio-economic-based outcome disparities. Those understandings, in turn, determine the extent to which the strategies they can imagine have the potential to eliminate or mitigate those disparities. I then argue that teacher education for equity and economic justice must equip pre- and in-service educators with astructural ideologyof poverty and economic injustice, based on a sophisticated understanding of relationships between structural inequalities and educational outcome disparities, rather than adeficitorgritideology, both of which obscure structural inequalities and, as a result, render educators ill-equipped to enact equitable and just teaching, leadership and advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue the emergence of a shift in U.S. language education policy discourses from an equity/heritage (EH) framework focused on equity for English learners and non-English heritage languages, toward a global human capital (GHC) framework linked to neoliberal considerations of the language skills of individuals and nations. This discursive shift represents a change in the audience to which language education programs are primarily marketed. Drawing on a critical approach to content analysis to test for evidence of this discursive shift in Utah, we analyzed 164 articles from 5 Utah newspapers from 2005 to 2011 that assigned value statements to dual language and bilingual education. EH values declined or changed little over time whereas GHC values increased. Policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Education Policy Analysis Archives / Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas / Arquivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas is the property of Educational Policy Analysis Archives & Education Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, I follow federal policy mandates and educational policy narratives to trace the resolution to inequality that was constructed post-Brown v. Board of Education, and what this resolution might tell us about the reconstitution of the racial state despite the extension of universal civil rights. I examine how the definition of harm espoused by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown, which identified harm as internal (or related to the psyche rather than as material), elided the question of resources and allowed for the continuance of race-based inequality in education to be explained as resulting from an embodied inferiority. I suggest that what has come to be termed the achievement gap is indicative the way in which this post-Brown resolution to inequality is articulated. I examine a substratum of the achievement gap—the word gap—that has become an increasing focus of recent education policy initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article connects the existence of structural violence to neoliberalism, by which we mean the economic and social philosophy that imposes free-market fundamentalism on all human interactions. We argue that U.S. institutions of higher education reflect and reproduce racism and other forms of structural violence pervasive across society, requiring scholars to explicitly confront the effects of neoliberalism on college and university campuses. For scholars who study social inequalities, it is pertinent to “inhabit” their work by directly addressing these hierarchies beyond their research and teaching, or even their civic engagement outside academe. We focus on the university as a site of institutional racism, though we conclude that achieving access and equity for historically underrepresented racial minority students, staff, faculty, and administrators must be tied to democratizing higher education by fighting neoliberal policies, practices, and logics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many school districts have recently revised, or tried to revise, their policies for assigning students to schools, because the legal and political status of racial and other kinds of diversity is uncertain, and the districts are facing fiscal austerity. This article presents case studies of politics and student assignment policy in three large school districts: Boston, Massachusetts; Wake County (Raleigh), North Carolina; and Jefferson County (Louisville), Kentucky. In all three districts, there has been pressure to change student-assignment policies in ways that respond to the priorities of White and middle-class populations, with the potential to worsen the options available to students of color. Our case studies reinforce the criticisms of race-neutral politics and policy that have been made by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and others. Race-neutral politics during fiscal retrenchment tends to reframe privilege as common sense and to obscure some students’ structural disadvantages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Education Policy Analysis Archives / Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas / Arquivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas is the property of Educational Policy Analysis Archives & Education Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

President Obama has proposed a financial aid policy whereby students who complete 100 hours of community service would receive a tax credit of US$4,000 for college. After lawmakers cut this proposal from previous legislation, the administration was tasked with studying the feasibility of implementation. However, the implications of the policy for potential and current college students are unclear, especially for students who have the most financial need. Given existing literature about student volunteerism, tax credits, and inducements as policy instruments, combined with analyses of student volunteerism from three national data sets, this study explores disparities in student volunteerism by income level and school type and draws implications from these results concerning who would be most likely to benefit from such a policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the high school search activities, choices, and final assignments of academically similar, but ethnically and socioeconomically different, eighth-grade students attending one New York City middle school. Despite being comparable candidates for admission to academically competitive high schools, the middle-class children of Asian immigrants were significantly more likely than the children of lower-income Latin American immigrants to be assigned to the highest performing schools. Interviews with 15 students revealed systematic differences in their knowledge, resources, and engagement in high school choice that help explain the disparity in the academic quality of their high school assignments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While African American English (AAE) and Standard American English (SAE) share many features, there are also differences that could affect comprehension. This article examines how 1st and 2nd grade AAE- and SAE-speaking children interpret sentences containing shared lexical and morphological (i.e., plural –s) forms as compared to sentences containing forms that do not regularly occur in AAE (past tense –ed, 3rd person present –s, future contracted –’ll). Using a picture-choice task the study found that while all children correctly interpreted shared forms, only the SAE-speakers, but not the AAE-speakers, successfully interpreted SAE tense morphology. In addition, the AAE-speakers showed no grade-related changes in performance. This suggests that linguistic differences may impact educational access for AAE-speaking students. These, and other implications, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ability grouping and tracking have been a major focus in educational research because of its role in promoting curriculum differentiation. However, there has been limited attention to how this differentiation occurs in contemporary schools involved with reform efforts including those focused on subject specific academic standards designed to improve student access to rigorous academic content. This article examines how varying teacher expectations regarding the implementation of academic standards promotes curriculum differentiation in middle schools involved with comprehensive school reform. Drawing on teacher interview and survey data from five middle schools, the author shows the challenges teachers confronted when implementing standards; the contradictory expectations teachers held toward students; and how teacher expectations affected to what extent standards were evenly applied. Despite the fact that standards are supposed to promote equity, this analysis shows these aims can be compromised by the challenges teachers confront in schools and contradictory expectations regarding standards. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Given the efforts of comprehensive school reform to improve the quality of educational opportunities for students by providing a standards based curriculum, this analysis examines the issue of tracking and its implications regarding curriculum differentiation. Using data from middle schools involved with the comprehensive school reform model, America’s Choice, this mixed method analysis shows a complex manifestation of curriculum differentiation where schools had multiple types of academic tracks that responded to students differences including comprehensive learning groups, subject-specific groups, and temporary learning groups used for test preparation. Although school-level reports indicated that most regular education and gifted students were exposed to the America’s Choice English Language Arts and mathematics units, special education students and English Language learners were least likely to gain access to this content. Individual teacher responses to tracking were idiosyncratic where some modified the curriculum and instructional pace by learning group ultimately impacting the amount of content exposure where those in the top learning groups were able to cover greater material than those in lower groups. Even though some teachers resisted tracking by addressing the classroom issues that caused differences in curriculum and instruction, tracking persisted as an entrenched practice in these middle schools through preexisting academic groups and were also replicated in new learning groups that emerged to address student academic needs related to state testing demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More foreign-born people live in the United States now than ever before in the country's history. Immigrants from Latin America, primarily from Mexico, constitute the largest proportion of all immigrants. Schools are the main vehicle, sometimes the only one, to integrate immigrant families and their children into U.S. society. This article, argues, however that broader social inequities affecting Latino immigrants infiltrate the practices of the public school system, galvanizing educational inequality around (perceived) deficiencies of Latino families, including their immigration status, via subtle (and often not so subtle) exclusion of Latino parents from active participation in the schools. We argue that the constructs of language proficiency, socioeconomic status, immigration status, and race/ethnicity pose challenges to Latino children and parents in U.S. society and its schools. A convergence of these 4 constructs creates vulnerabilities that constrict the opportunities for many Latinos. This article proposes that limited parental and community engagement can be understood as consequences of social inequities which remain unaddressed in the institutional context of public education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the range of challenges faced by African American students today and argues against “silver bullet” solutions in addressing them. Academic success will not be achieved by imposing narrowly conceived remedies to interconnected factors such as teacher preparation, student engagement, school financing, or parent support. Sustained, community-wide Black academic excellence requires contextual responses to these areas, along with comprehensive policies that address quality of life in Black communities. This article suggests that contextually generated responses to local realities have the potential to usher in broader structurally transformative solutions so that low-income students and students of color can access high quality learning opportunities unhindered by indecent housing, lack of healthcare, inadequate nutrition, financial insecurity, or other destabilizing conditions that affect families. We offer examples of the collaborative, action-oriented work that must be conceptualized and enacted if we are to successfully address the ongoing challenges in Black education. We also introduce a framework for considering the transformative work engaged by critical educators, organizers and activists across the country. Our hope is that along with direct service programs that facilitate community responses to sociocultural and economic influences on learning, complementary efforts are engaged to eradicate the systemic inequities to which such programs respond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, states are required "…to ensure that poor and minority children are not taught at higher rates than other children by inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers…" Although the NCLB law and State Education Agencies (SEAs) currently offer very clear definitions of "highly-qualified" teachers, "teacher quality" remains a contested term-particularly at local levels. Findings from this study suggest the definition of teacher quality determines, in large part, the extent to which the geographical distribution of quality is equitable. A large urban district in Los Angeles demonstrates how different the distribution appears with each definition of teacher quality. In this study, the evidence will show that the distribution is more unequal if the district uses a stronger set of criteria for teacher quality than using the weaker proxies for quality such as full-credential and NCLB definitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When H. Councill Trenholm wrote that “we have a long way to go”, he fully understood the barriers that African-Americans faced in securing educational equity in the twentieth century, particularly in the segregated South. He also was keenly aware of the importance of education to community development, human development, and self-actualisation. Trenholm excelled at building civic capacity by leveraging institutions and organisations. As a teacher, professor, teacher association leader and college president, he had a remarkable career marked by steady progress in strengthening a teacher corps and an institution of higher education, Alabama State, but he also faced crushing disappointments. This case study examines Trenholm's vision and roles in expanding educational opportunity as the president of a major, state-funded, segregated college, mobilising support of the National Education Association, nurturing the American Teachers Association, and persuading the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools to agree to review and accredit African-American colleges and high schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a missing piece to America's education agenda, and children will continue to be left behind until that piece is addressed. Furthermore, children are not being systematically prepared for their complex roles as citizens in our democracy. A growing body of evidence from research and practice suggests reconceptualizing education as an integration of social-emotional and character development (SECD) and academic learning. This article reviews skills children need for effective social and academic participation, characteristics of schools that effectively integrate these forms of learning, and key reasons to adopt this integration. It concludes with examples of, and suggestions for, bringing SECD to prominence in educational policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that African American and other students of color, students labeled as having disabilities, and poor students in urban schools are indisputably linked in terms of the quality of schooling they have experienced, few attempts have been made to examine the relationship between special education and urban education. Both students placed in special education and those who attend urban schools have a long history of being miseducated, under-educated, and treated inequitably by the American educational system, with the American educational system at times excluding these students altogether from receiving a free and appropriate public education. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide (a) a historical analysis of special education and the treatment of students with disabilities prior to the Brown decision; (b) an analysis of the challenges that students with disabilities, African American and students of color, poor students in urban schools, and students affected by all three have historically experienced in their quest to receive a free and appropriate education in the American educational system; (c) a discussion that illustrates that special education is the new tool for the resegregation of African American and other students of color in special education; (d) a discussion of who the real beneficiaries of failed urban schools are and why they resist providing an equitable education to all children; and (e) specific examples of what it means to go for broke in calling out educational inequities and advocating for African American and other students of color, poor students, students with disabilities, students in urban settings, and students affected by all of these factors and issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this manuscript, we will share an experience where our own research with/in teacher education was highly influenced by public policy and narrowed by an outcomes–based approach to learning. We began working in a United States Title I elementary school to understand and describe literacy practice – teaching and learning – through a lens of social justice. However, our effort was largely overshadowed by a new program that was being implemented, without input from school faculty and staff, in all classrooms in this Title I school. This primarily qualitative research study explored the perceptions of elementary school teachers connected to literacy and social justice, determined literacy and social justice practices in elementary school classrooms, and examined the process of teachers’ engaging in a newly implemented, prescriptive program. We focus on the influence of a new school–wide program on literacy teaching and learning practice and the resulting phenomenon of collaboration time and narrowed curriculum and instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quest for educational equity is a moral imperative for a society in which education is a crucial determinant of life chances. Yet whether there is an economic return to the taxpayer for investing in educational justice is often not considered. It is possible that the economic benefits of reducing inadequate education exceed the costs, returning a healthy dividend to the taxpayer. This article addresses a four-decade quest to ascertain the fiscal consequences of investing in effective approaches to reduce inadequate education in the United States. It uses economic analysis to calculate both the costs of effective strategies to raise high school graduation rates and their benefits to the taxpayer in higher tax revenues and reduced costs of criminal justice, public health, and public assistance. The results suggest that improving educational justice provides substantial returns to taxpayers that exceed the costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In interviews with over 250 urban young adolescents, many students make it clear that they are acutely aware of the educational inequities that exist in their schools and that these inequities are having a negative impact on their education. Student voice is used to highlight urban middle school students’ perspectives on the quality of their education particularly in terms of curricular issues, teacher quality, and lack of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The next president of the United States faces monumental challenges in the areas of national defense, the economy, and health care. However, one daunting domestic issue the nation must face is the continued educational inequity that exists between children of color and their white counterparts in our schools. This article looks at four facets of the educational equity challenge and reframes the discourse from one of achievement gaps to education debt. The four facets of that debt are historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral. Without this more robust look at how these disparities occur, the nation's schools will continue to tinker with peripheral issues such as more testing, continued grade retention, and punishing students and teachers, and fail to solve our real education problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commemorating and reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, this article reexamines their impact on school desegregation efforts. Specifically, this article traces the history of the Supreme Court's rulings in cases focused on outlining and clarifying the proper implementation of the Brown decisions. The cases discussed in this text, which came before the Court between 1958 and 1995, questioned the legality and validity of using busing, school assignments, district restructuring, and other methods to remedy the lingering presence of segregation in public school districts. This article contends that one the main reasons Brown failed to initiate effective remedies and end segregated schooling in the United States is because the Supreme Court simply lost interest in supporting, reviewing, and achieving school desegregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]