Objective: Vertical community college transfer has become an essential pathway for many students who hope to attain bachelor's degrees. Prior literature indicates that institutional supports, like transfer articulation agreements and transfer advising, have a positive influence on transfer success. Yet, spatial inequality theory indicates that…

To develop targeted climate change curricula, it is imperative to understand how students perceive and observe the localized effects of climate change. Our work used a quantitatively driven, parallel mixed methods research design to study potential factors that contribute to undergraduate biology students seeing the local effects of climate…

Online learning is one form of distance education mediated through information and communications technology. We used a descriptive research design to develop and validate a multidimensional instrument to assess readiness and motivations for online learning. We provided a theoretical framework to better understand the concept of readiness for…

Background: Over the past several years, numerous news stories have highlighted school districts' struggles in attracting personnel to adequately staff their schools. While these stories provide important anecdotes, there is little comprehensive work that documents school districts' demand for teachers, paraprofessionals, and other essential…

Parents make choices about their children's education within a neoliberal, racist system. Measurable metrics are used to evaluate school quality within a competitive, market-based system, yet those indicators often do not align with parents' definitions of a good school, and they obscure the role of race. This paper examines how white, privileged…

Much research on access to the higher education system overlooks the importance of a base factor: place. An 'education desert' is defined as an area in which residents are separated from the higher education system by geography and structural factors. This study employs a granular approach to locate education deserts within the state of North…

This chartbook is the 14th version to be produced for the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The Chartbook describes the diversity of the Appalachian Region on a host of demographic and economic measures and provides an important annual view of the area and its people. The data contained in the…

This Policy Snapshot provides summary information for 2017 legislation related to attainment goals and plans, as well as policy actions from previous years.

"Gerrymandering" is known best as a tool to manipulate boundaries for voting districts, but school districts have long used the same tool to manipulate school boundaries. The author used geospatial techniques--mapping various kinds of demographic data onto school boundaries--to examine public school attendance zones and their effect on…

This study examines whether the physical location of Pre-K programs--whether in elementary school buildings or stand-alone centers--leads to differences in student outcomes in elementary school. Over the past several decades, public investment in Pre-K programming has burgeoned. According to the National Institute for Early Education Research, 32…

This study examined growth trajectories of teacher-reported adaptive behavior in a diverse sample of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. The participants were 244 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 21 years who were assessed at up to four time points across two and a half years of high school. Demographic variables (age, sex, race,…

Housing choice vouchers provide low-income households with additional income to spend on rental housing in the private market. The assistance vouchers provide is substantial, offering the potential to dramatically expand the neighborhood--and associated public schools--that low-income households can reach. However, existing research on the program…

Students commonly hold erroneous notions of a "post-racial" world and individualistic worldviews that discount the role of structure in social outcomes. Jointly, these two preconceived beliefs can be powerful barriers to effective teaching of racial segregation: Students may be skeptical that racial segregation continues to exist, and…

This brief report uses data collected under the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Fall Enrollment survey to highlight distance education data in the state of North Carolina. The sample for this analysis is comprised of all active, degree-granting…

Every year, millions of college students borrow money to help bridge the gap between college costs and available income, savings, and grants. Experts agree that, for those who need to borrow to pay for college, federal student loans are the safest and most affordable option. Unfortunately, some colleges choose not to participate in the federal…