Narratives featuring majoritarian (e.g., White, male, middle/upper class, and/or heterosexual) protagonists are so prevalent in U.S. society that they have become the normative reference point by which some members of society may view and label others. They may, therefore, implicitly consider those who do not fit the majoritarian mold as somehow…

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) Social Justice Committee (SJC) chose the theme of health disparities as the focus of the committee's work for the 2020-2021 school year. The pandemic underscored the importance of this theme and school psychologists' understanding of health disparities through…

The last several years have been unpredictable for students, families, teachers and schools. During this time, Ohio's education community has responded by working diligently to identify and address the unique needs of their communities while ensuring their students continue to receive a quality education. Data on the 2021-2022 Ohio School Report…

This Data Byte presents a summary of findings among students in the 2020 ACT-tested graduating class, over 225,000 of whom took the PreACT® test before taking the ACT® test. Five findings are highlighted: (1) PreACT-tested students scored higher on the ACT test; (2) Average gain from the PreACT to the ACT varies across subjects; (3) Average gain…

This study tracked college and workforce outcomes for students who began 8th grade in fall 1998 and attended a Texas public school. Students were tracked for 17 years, through summer 2015, when they were approximately 30 years old. Of the 38,322 eighth-grade students in Harris County, 30 percent finished a postsecondary certificate or degree.…

New energy, new evidence, and an emerging consensus on how learning happens have created a remarkable opportunity to galvanize widespread adoption of a whole child approach. However, messages about how learning happens are often obscured by confusion over terminology, weakening the field's overall ability to tell a compelling story about social,…

COVID-19 has exacerbated existing equity gaps and made college persistence even more difficult for students with less access to resources and opportunities than their White or wealthier peers. Altogether, these challenges require organizations to establish new approaches to engaging college students and monitoring their academic progress and…

As noted in the first article in this National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) Social Justice Committee (SJC) series on health disparities (see Proctor et al., 2020), health disparities are preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or in opportunities to achieve optimal health experienced by socially…

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the longstanding pattern of lower scholastic performance among marginalized groups of students negatively impacted by poverty, disability, and race. The perception among educators and citizens continues to be that practices around equal rights equate to provisions related to equity. In Arkansas, the unknown…

Indiana has a robust portfolio of high school options, including traditional public schools, charter schools, and private schools that accept Indiana Choice Scholarships (private voucher schools). But little research is available on the characteristics of students who attend different types of high schools or how their college and career readiness…

This paper combines tools from policy sociology with those from Critical Race Theory (CRT) to build a framework for a CRT-based education policy analysis, based on a set of questions about the relationship between policy and racial inequalities. Drawing on a case study of assessment policy in England, the paper examines how tools from both bodies…

For the second consecutive school year, Ohio's students and adults faced unique and challenging circumstances because of the ongoing global pandemic. The information in this report card reflects these teaching and learning conditions and should be reviewed while considering the resulting disruptions that, in many cases, affected students'…

Although the percentage of high school students in advanced STEM courses has risen steadily in the past two decades throughout the United States, disparities persist across student subgroups, such as racial/ethnic groups (Aud et al., 2013; Laird, Alt, & Wu, 2009; Texas Education Agency, 2011). Racial/ethnic minority student enrollment in…

In 2014 the Washington state legislature approved career- and college-ready (CCR) requirements for high school graduation that better align with admissions standards at the state's public universities than previous requirements did and that aim to equip students with the skills to pursue the career of their choice. The requirements took effect for…

It is difficult to find justice-centered books geared specifically for community college practitioners interested in achieving campus wide educational equity. It is even more difficult to find a book in this vein written, exclusively, by community college practitioners. "Minding the Obligation Gap in Community Colleges and Beyond" is…