Improving educational performance, including narrowing equity gaps, is frequently touted as a matter of improving the quality of teachers in the lowest performing, often disadvantaged, schools. However, the assumption that teaching is of poorer quality in disadvantaged schools is largely unsubstantiated. Using the Quality Teaching Model of…

Background: Many children in the United States are victims of bullying; many of the victimized retaliate, aggressively bullying those who have bullied them. Objective: Applying the multiple disadvantage model, this U.S.-based secondary study of data describing bullied children's own perpetration of bullying examined this behavior's relationship to…

The analogy of South Africa as an ailing "organism" afflicted by chronic socio-economic inequality is apt as it captures the nation's manifest endemic abrasions and frailties, especially as it relates to the lived experience of its most vulnerable citizens (the precariat). COVID-19 has accentuated the plight of the poor, yet political…

The racial achievement gap continues to be a pervasive challenge in the United States' educational system (Hernandez, 2021). The existing literature offers a broad range of theories and recommendations for how teachers can more effectively support the learning of students from diverse backgrounds. Themes in the literature on this topic describe…

Although education is a right, it still remains a distant dream for many of India's children (Where knowledge is poor). It is clear that it is not enough to make laws; they need to be augmented by more efforts. Education should be accessible to all if democracy is to succeed. Many communities and groups like disadvantaged castes and women have…

This case study uncovers how controversial issues such as the recent influx of refugees and immigrants were being addressed in upper elementary classrooms on the United States (US) side of the US/Mexico border. Public school administrators and sixth-grade teachers from two school sites participated. Transborder pedagogy contextualized the findings…

Higher levels of civic and community engagement in higher education are positively associated with students' academic performance and they also build upon citizenship skills such as informed voting. Yet, while these are worthy and important outcomes of higher education, students from disadvantaged backgrounds can have more difficulty navigating…

This essay analyzes the graphic novel "In Real Life" as an example of Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang's intention to raise young people's awareness about gender and economic disparities within the gaming industry. Broadly, "In Real Life" combats the pervasive cultural anxiety that Jane McGonigal challenges in her book "Reality…

This case was written to help prepare teacher-leaders, principals, and central office administrators, particularly those in rural and economically marginalized settings, who are expected to lead teachers and stakeholders in their community through increasingly stressed economic conditions. The intent of the case study is for educators to examine…

This paper examines two aspects of teen childbearing in the United States. First, it reviews and synthesizes the evidence on the reasons why teen birth rates are so uniquely high in the United States and especially in some states. Second, it considers why and how it matters. We argue that economists' typical explanations are unable to account for…

In 1837, Margaret Prior became the first female missionary for the American Female Moral Reform Society. She traveled throughout the poorest neighborhoods in New York City--entering barrooms, brothels, and sickrooms. Based on an analysis of Prior's missionary reports, published in the society's periodical and included in her memoir, this essay…

Gaps in the achievement between poor and more advantaged children and minority and nonminority students of all ages continue to be the most central problem in the field of education. Achievement differences by racial/ethnic group and socioeconomic status (SES) level are especially pronounced and pervasive within the major urban school districts in…

Poverty among individuals is an enduring condition in almost all societies. The responses by governments to poverty, however, have varied. In the United States, President Lyndon Johnson sought to address poverty through the creation of the Great Society programs in the 1960s. In effect, he declared a War on Poverty. Later, especially during the…

Backers of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) based their support on the belief that teachers and administrators primarily were responsible for low levels of achievement by America's poor. But this one-sided view is both inadequate and unsupported by the evidence. The author argues that harsh social policies and the pernicious effects of poverty are more…

Since the mid-1970s the U.S. imprisonment rate has increased roughly fivefold. As Christopher Wildeman and Bruce Western explain, the effects of this sea change in the imprisonment rate--commonly called mass imprisonment or the prison boom--have been concentrated among those most likely to form fragile families: poor and minority men with little…