Educational Researcher

Fenwick asserts that the failure to integrate Black principals and teachers into desegregating public schools remains the unfulfilled promise of Brown and has resulted in four traumas that continue to stymie the nation’s progress toward the conjoined goals of racial justice and educational equity. Brown was not intended to simply mean that African American and White students were to be educated side by side in order to achieve integrated schools. Often overlooked, many legal decisions subsequent to Brown asserted that the criterion for knowing that integration was achieved was the racial integration of district and school leadership and the teaching force.

As international student mobility increases, research on students’ experiences with race and racism has expanded. However, much of current scholarship relies heavily on U.S.-based racial theories, often neglecting how race operates fluidly across global contexts. This conceptual article revisits the concept of “race” by extending critical race theory and raciolinguistics beyond U.S. and Western borders to examine racism and racialization as global phenomena. It argues that international students’ racial identities are shaped by preexisting racial discourses in their home countries, reinforced by global structures of racialized power, and continuously reshaped as they navigate transnational social fields. By broadening the theoretical scope of race, this article highlights the need for a globally inclusive race framework in international student research.

Studies consistently show that minoritized students benefit from having a teacher of the same race/ethnicity. We extend this literature by examining educational impacts of exposure to same-race/ethnicity professional staff, including administrators, instructional coaches, guidance counselors, and special education specialists. Students interact with these staff less frequently than teachers, yet staff of color may also serve as role models, support culturally relevant practices, and help prevent discrimination. Using within-student and within-school variation in statewide Maryland data, we find that higher shares of same-ethnicity staff improve test scores and modestly reduce suspensions for Hispanic students. For Black students, exposure to non-Black, non-White professionals of color is associated with higher English language arts performance, although these effects are smaller—about one-fifth the size of teacher effects.

Students often become homeless due to conventional, economic instability; however, they also become homeless from natural disasters. We provide initial empirical evidence comparing these pathways to homelessness in the context of Houston and Hurricane Harvey. Analyzing 7 years of data on 321,439 students using a comparative interrupted time-series approach incorporating student-level fixed effects, we find students who became homeless due to Harvey were more representative of district students overall and had more similar educational outcomes after the storm. Conversely, students who became homeless due to conventional reasons had more adverse outcomes, which improved after identification. We discuss these findings in light of the differential social constructions of these subgroups and conclude with implications for policy and practice.

Brown v. Board of Education has played a central role in imagining educational justice in the United States. However, the lessons that we should draw from school desegregation is contested terrain, and desegregation efforts have largely failed both to grapple with the country’s multiracial constituency and to offer a positive vision for schools. In this essay, we use theoretical conceptualizations of justice, relational theories of race, and research literature to offer a more robust vision of public schooling for a multiracial democracy. This multidimensional, situated, and relational framework is one powerful tool for those designing research, policies, and practices that help us move toward multiracial democracy.

Achievement gaps in school readiness between dual language learners (DLLs) and their English-only peers persist, in part because common assessment practices do not fully capture DLLs’ abilities. Using the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey, a nationally representative sample of Head Start children, this study examines whether DLLs’ performance varies by assessment language. Applying a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we found that DLLs who barely failed the language screening and were assessed in Spanish for mathematics outperformed those who barely passed and were assessed in English. These findings reveal biases in assessment practices that may misrepresent DLLs’ abilities, reinforcing educational inequities. Results underscore the need for linguistically responsive assessments that more accurately reflect DLLs’ mathematical competencies.

India’s multilingual classrooms require more than formal language policy; they require communicative pedagogies that enable equitable participation in learning. Although India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 emphasizes mother tongue instruction, implementation often overlooks how teachers steer through linguistic diversity in practice. This essay reviews emerging research on teacher-student communication across Indian classrooms, foregrounding adaptive strategies such as translanguaging, visual scaffolding, and peer mediation. These practices, although essential, remain undervalued in teacher education and curriculum design. Introducing the framework of “communicative justice,” the essay argues that meaningful inclusion requires recognizing students’ linguistic repertoires and supporting teachers’ communicative agency. It calls for systemic investment in multilingual pedagogy, inclusive assessment, and discourse-based research to align policy with classroom realities.

This study examined changes in kindergarten redshirting and retention practices in Delaware since the COVID-19 pandemic. Using student-level data from fall 2010 to fall 2023, we found that redshirting rates spiked dramatically in fall 2021, with the largest relative increases among historically underrepresented groups including Black, Hispanic, and low-income students. Retention showed a long-term declining trend that was disrupted only in 2021, when rates returned to pre-pandemic levels. These patterns suggest both practices operated as parallel strategies for securing more typical kindergarten experiences. These demographic shifts have important implications for classroom composition and instructional planning in post-pandemic elementary education.

Teacher staffing challenges were pervasive throughout the pandemic, but the downturn in student enrollment combined with the end of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds leaves considerable uncertainty about the postpandemic teacher labor market. We use data on new teacher endorsements and job postings scraped from district hiring websites in Washington to measure postpandemic supply and demand for teachers both overall and by subject area. We find that between 2022 and 2024, the supply of new teachers in Washington exceeded demand for teachers in the aggregate, but demand for special education and science teachers considerably outpaced the supply of new endorsements in these areas.

Evaluators “save the best for last” by systematically elevating the final year-end observation scores for novices or low-performing teachers. Examining 5,251 K–12 teachers, we document a striking reversal: evaluator scores typically fell below teacher self-assessments across initial and midyear observations but exceeded them by approximately 0.25 SD in final year-end observations. This pattern was robust to unobserved differences across annual teacher-evaluator pairings, the instructional domains observed, and observation timing. The data suggest that evaluation systems are not implemented uniformly across performance tiers, revealing tensions between accountability and developmental support that merit explicit acknowledgment in evaluation framework design.

Non-teaching staff comprise over half of all school employees, and their turnover may be consequential for school operation, culture, and student success, yet we lack evidence documenting their attrition. We use 17 years (2007–2023) of administrative data from Oregon to examine mobility and exit among teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, licensed staff, and non-licensed staff. Although teacher turnover dominates turnover conversations, teachers are consistently the most stable employee group, even as turnover surged following the COVID-19 pandemic. School factors, such as colleague experience, predict turnover rates for all employees, but within-school turnover between staff groups is not highly correlated, and associations with some school context factors vary by employee groups. Results suggest that employee turnover is not a homogeneous phenomenon across staffing groups.

Extending findings from a 26-year longitudinal study of educational opportunity, we examine whether opportunities are related to the educational attainment and earnings of children from lower-income households (n = 226) as a function of when in a child’s development they occur. We compare the predictive power of opportunities accrued within three key developmental stages—early childhood, middle childhood, or adolescence—with the combined power of opportunities accrued across these stages. Our findings point to the value of educational opportunity in all three stages, particularly for educational attainment.

STEM deserts, similar to education deserts, are rural, suburban, and urban areas where students have limited access to school-based STEM curriculum and coursework opportunities. Using administrative data from the Houston Independent School District following a state policy change to high school graduation requirements, this study develops measures of STEM deserts and identifies the students most likely to live in them. Findings reveal that Black and Asian/Pacific Islander students, students from non-English-speaking households, and those from lower socioeconomic neighborhoods are disproportionately likely to live in STEM deserts compared to White students, students from English-speaking households, and those from higher socioeconomic neighborhoods.

Residential instability is linked to lower educational attainment, but research—particularly quantitative research—often overlooks the causes underlying residential moves and the differential effects of forced and voluntary mobility. Using longitudinal data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine how different trajectories of residential mobility shape high school completion among low-income children. We find that both forced and voluntary moves are associated with lower graduation rates. Repeated moves and moves during adolescence are also linked to lower graduation rates, while eviction-specific moves are not uniquely predictive of graduation.

Although substantial evidence supports tutoring’s efficacy, student participation rates in tutoring programs rarely reach desired levels. Our mixed-methods study examines implementation challenges across three in-school tutoring delivery models: live in person, live virtual, and artificial intelligence (AI) virtual. Drawing on student-level dosage data and qualitative evidence, we find that dosage rates across implementations were quite low. All programs faced challenges with scheduling and tutor quality. The in-person model suffered inadequate tutor/teacher communications and the difficulty of limiting tutoring to targeted students, and both virtual models faced persistent challenges with technology. Additionally, the AI-based model was hindered by the absence of meaningful adult/student relationships. We conclude that the implementation barriers we identify are addressable, putting high-dosage tutoring within reach.

This study examines the relationship between test-optional undergraduate admissions policies and two common student success metrics: the retention rate for first-year students and the 6-year graduation rate for bachelor’s students. Using a difference-in-differences analytic approach designed to account for the staggered nature of policy adoption, I find that test-optional policies adopted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic were not associated with statistically significant changes in institution-level retention and graduation rates overall. However, subgroup analyses by institutional selectivity indicate that test-optional policy enactment was associated with a 2 percentage point increase in graduation rates for men, women, and White students at institutions with more competitive admissions but a 2 percentage point decrease in graduation rates for White students at institutions with less competitive admissions.

Using nationally representative data from 2000 to 2021, we examine the distribution of teacher characteristics and qualifications over time, with an emphasis on early career teacher (ECT) qualifications, access to induction supports, and perceptions of preparedness and their distribution across majority-minority, high-poverty, and rural schools. We find the proportion of ECTs and first-year teachers has remained mostly stable and even declined slightly between 2000 and 2021. Despite efforts to diversify the profession in recent years, there is little change in the proportion of teachers of color. ECTs have greater access to induction supports and feelings of preparedness on most measures over time, particularly in nonrural schools. However, we find growing disparities between teacher qualifications and preparedness in rural and nonrural school contexts.

Labor organizing efforts grew following the COVID-19 pandemic in American higher education institutions. This research brief examines unionization trends at private colleges and universities from 2007 through 2023, revealing staff as the main force behind unionization attempts, followed by contingent faculty. The Service Employees International Union plays a significant role in representing college and university employees. A disproportionate number of elections occurred in a handful of union-friendly states and well-resourced institutions. This study underscores the importance of understanding historic unionization efforts, shedding light on often overlooked staff categories, such as maintenance and campus security.

Scholars emphasize the mismatch between state and federal initiatives and the operational realities of rural education. This study uses 2023–2024 data from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core and Education Demographics and Geographic Estimates program to describe variation in the organizational size of rural-serving districts in the United States. Most are small, with 75% enrolling fewer than 1,990 students. Some districts are especially small and operate only one school or employ a single administrator. Conversely, rural schools are also located in very large districts. The largest rural-serving districts also enroll the highest percentage of rural students who are Black and Hispanic.

Classroom management critically affects students’ academic and behavioral outcomes, yet we lack quantitative methods for observing these practices at scale. This study develops and validates language-based measures of classroom management—such as responding to student behavior and issuing verbal or material sanctions—using natural language processing on 1,652 elementary mathematics classroom transcripts. On average, classroom management language comprises 24% of teacher talk, and behavior management comprises 7%, with wide variation across teachers. Novice teachers use more reprimands, and command frequency increases with experience. Classrooms with more Black students experience more language reflecting exclusionary discipline. These measures offer a new lens for studying and supporting classroom management as it unfolds in real time.