Tag » economic

• Explanatory factors of the Black achievement gap in Montréal's public and private schools: A multivariate analysis

  1/1/09 - Caldas, Stephen J., Bernier, Sylvain, Marceau, Richard

  This exploratory analysis uses multiple regression modeling to help shed light on the correlates of the Black achievement gap in Montréal’s public and private secondary schools. Using school-level testing data from Québec’s Ministry of Education, the authors show that there is a Black achievement gap, and that this gap is highly associated with school socio-economic status, peer family structure, and average age of the student body’s...

• Family (Dis)Advantage and the Educational Prospects of Better Off African American Youth: How Race Still Matters

  1/1/07 - Gosa, Travis L., Alexander, Karl L.

  While the educational difficulties of poor black students are well documented and have been discussed extensively, the academic performance of well-off African American children has received much less attention. Even with economic and educational resources in the home, well-off African American youth are not achieving at the levels of their white peers. Why is this? A review of relevant literature identifies a set of social processes that pose formidable barriers to the academic and personal...

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  Four Day School Week

  1/16/09 - Molly Ryan

  "As school districts nationwide struggle with funding cuts, the four-day school week has gained momentum as one way to save money. This past legislative session, legislators in six states considered measures to authorize eliminating one instructional day per week from the school calendar. The four-day school week is not a novel issue, as it first appears to have been used by South Dakota in the 1930s. During the energy crisis of the early 1970s, districts in New Mexico implemented the...

• From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools

  1/1/06 - Ladson-Billings, Gloria

  The achievement gap is one of the most talked-about issues in U.S. education. The term refers to the disparities in standardized test scores between Black and White, Latina/o and White, and recent immigrant and White students. This article argues that a focus on the gap is misplaced. Instead, we need to look at the "education debt" that has accumulated over time. This debt comprises historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral components. The author draws an analogy with the concept of...

• Gap or Gaps: Challenging the Singular Definition of the Achievement Gap

  1/1/06 - Carpenter Ii, Dick M., Ramirez, Al, Severn, Laura

  For decades, researchers examined the ‘achievement gap’ between minority and nonminority students. This singular definition of achievement gap ignores important within-group differences. This article uses National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) data to examine within-group differences and compares those across Latino, African American, and White populations. Results question the singular definition of achievement gap. Given the importance of how issues are defined, a singular...

• Harvard Business Review

  1/1/05
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  Hispanicity and Educational Inequality: Risks, Opportunities and the Nation’s Future

  1/28/09 - Marta Tienda

  In this essay, I discuss the significance of the growing Hispanic presence through the lens of education. To frame the challenges — and promises — of Hispanics’ educational futures, I first provide a demographic retrospective, which brings into focus several features that bear on the demand for education and contours of inequality. These include the pace of population growth and diversification; the unprecedented generational transition; and aging of the majority White population...

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  Homeless Children and Youth: Causes and Consequences

  1/26/09 - Yumiko Aratani

  Housing plays a pivotal role in the well-being of children and families. Stable housing is a critical factor for positive child and youth development. Unfortunately, the number of homeless families with children has increased in recent years due to the lack of affordable housing. On top of that, the current economic recession and the housing crisis further increase the likelihood of homelessness among children and youth.

• Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap

  1/1/07 - Alexander, Karl L., Entwisle, Doris R., Olson, Linda Steffel

  Prior research has demonstrated that summer learning rooted in family and community influences widens the achievement gap across social lines, while schooling offsets those family and community influences. In this article, we examine the long-term educational consequences of summer learning differences by family socioeconomic level. Using data from the Baltimore Beginning School Study youth panel, we decompose achievement scores at the start of high school into their developmental...

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  Leadership in the interest of economically disadvantaged students

  1/16/09 - Randy Boomer

  I want to think with you about the most vulnerable people in our schools—children from low-income homes. Principals are aware, probably more than anyone else, that NCLB requires reporting of the progress of economically disadvantaged students. The naming of that category makes students from poor families visible and vulnerable in a whole new way. Kids were poor before, and poverty created gaps in achievement and opportunity, but now there is a newly motivated interest in “fixing” poor...

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  Leadership in the interest of economically disadvantaged students: A response

  1/1/09 - Whitney Oakley

  As a principal of an elementary school with steadily increasing numbers of economically disadvantaged students, I have seen a shift in focus on academic as well as systemic strategies in our approach to student success. Randy Bomer’s discussion of deficit perspective is well-taken as political issues surrounding school performance have highlighted the fact that schools are struggling to achieve adequate progress within the economically disadvantaged subgroup. In a position as a school...

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  Meaningful Measurement: The Role of Assessments in Improving High School Education in the Twenty-First Century

  1/7/10 - Pinkus, L.M.

  Success in today’s global and entrepreneurial economy increasingly requires some form of postsecondary education or training. Yet too many students—particularly poor and minority students—leave the K–12 system without the knowledge and skills necessary for success after high school. The long-term implications of an inadequate education have social and economic consequences for individuals, the communities in which they live, and the nation as a whole. The challenge ahead is twofold...

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  Miles to go Mississippi

  1/2/10 - Southern Education Foundation,

  "Mississippi is the only Southern state that has no statesupported pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) program. This brief reviews how Mississippi is falling behind other states in the Deep South in early childhood education; why Mississippi needs a Pre-K program now; options for how the state can finance such a program; and current opportunities (even in economic hard times) for Mississippi to begin to build on existing assets to establish a Pre-K program for the benefit of all Mississippians in the...

• No Child Left Behind: Who Wins? Who Loses?

  1/1/05 - Arce, Josephine, Luna, Debra, Borjian, Ali, Conrad, Marguerite

  The article focuses on the 2002 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, signed by U.S. President George W. Bush, focusing on policy and distribution of funds to public schools. Proponents of the act claim that it aims to close the achievement gap by holding school districts and states accountable, encouraging the use of flexible educational approaches, and supporting parents' rights to school choice. However, one question arises about the means by which the U.S. administration's public school...

• Parent Involvement, Cultural Capital, and the Achievement Gap Among Elementary School Children

  1/1/06 - Lee, Jung-Sook, Bowen, Natasha K.

  This study examined the level and impact of five types of parent involvement on elementary school children's academic achievement by race/ethnicity, poverty, and parent educational attainment. The sample comprised 415 third through fifth graders who completed the Elementary School Success Profile. Hypotheses from Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital were assessed with tests, chi-square statistics, and hierarchical regressions. Consistent with the theory, parents with different demographic...

• Pushing Past the Achievement Gap: An Essay on the Language of Deficit

  1/1/07 - Ladson-Billings, Gloria

  Part of a special issue celebrating the 75th anniversary of The Journal of Negro Education. There has been an intense focus on the achievement gap that exists between African American, Latino, and other students of color and their white counterparts, but this discourse keeps everyone locked in the deficit paradigm. The current concern with an achievement gap is substantive and semantic, does not take into account the other gaps that plague the lives of poor children of color, and suggests...