There is renewed interest in the role of arts education in the curriculum of U.S. public schools not only because of the intrinsic value of the arts and its believed impact on achievement, but because cultivating creativity is thought to promote innovation and fuel economic growth. Still, we know little about basic access to arts education. Using…

One to One technology initiatives are a national trend, but something districts must weigh heavily as they are costly. The purpose of this study is to explore the One to One initiative in a middle school as it relates to student achievement and reducing economic disparity. Bourdieu's Cultural Capital Theory applies to this study as one would…

With middle-income jobs in decline, entrepreneurship offers an increasingly promising pathway out of poverty; but few low-income New Yorkers are currently taking this route to economic self-sufficiency. This report provides the most comprehensive examination of low-income entrepreneurship in New York. The report documents current self-employment…

This quantitative and qualitative study sought to examine the factors that teachers in a poor socio-economic, high-minority, urban, inner-city school district determined were important when gauging their effectiveness in the classroom. The study focused on the selection of specific factors by approximately seventy-five teachers from seven of eight…

This book focuses on the questions of: why do some economically disadvantaged nations develop significantly faster than others, and what roles do their educational systems play? As case illustrations, in the early 1960s Mexico and South Korea were both equally underdeveloped agrarian societies. Since that time, the development strategies pursued…

The purpose of this quantitative research study was to observe if students' levels of Mathematics Self-Efficacy (MSE) had any effect on how they used resources available to them through an academic intervention and retention program. The sample size consisted of 81 students admitted to a four year university under the special criteria of…

Federal Title I funding has been allocated to districts since 1965 in an effort to provide schools with a high population of identified low socioeconomic students with additional resources to close the achievement gap. The basis for this study was to ascertain whether the Title I funding that schools received was having a positive impact on…

For four years, a nine-member team studied 31 highly effective teachers in nine low-performing urban elementary, middle, and high schools in some of the most economically depressed neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. The teachers were selected based on having had the highest percentage of students moving up a level on the English/Language Arts or…

This longitudinal study was conducted to gain understanding of the social-emotional and academic development of economically disadvantaged bilingual preschool children. In Study 1, the authors combined cognitive, psychosocial, and cultural-linguistic factors to determine profiles of social competence as measured by peer play. A person-centered…

Context: Emergency Department (ED) use among the rural elderly may present a different pattern from the urban elderly, thus requiring different policy initiatives. However, ED use among the rural elderly has seldom been studied and is little understood. Purpose: To characterize factors associated with having any versus no ED use among the rural…

In the 2006-07 school year, North Brunswick High School--a rural, racially and economically diverse high school in Leland, North Carolina--was identified as a priority school by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Overall student proficiency was at 48.6%, indicating that less than one-half of all students earned a score of…

Fingertip Facts is a compendium of some of the most frequently requested data sets from the Utah State Office of Education. Data sets in this year's Fingertip Facts include: Core CRT Language Arts Testing, 2013; Core CRT Mathematics Testing, 2013; 2013 Public Education General Fund; 2012-13 Enrollment Demographics; Public Schools by Grade Level,…

The annual event dropout rate describes the proportion of students who leave school each year without completing a high school program. The event dropout rates for the school year 2010-2011 of 1.77% for grades 7 through 12th and 2.55% for grades 9 through 12th are consistent with the dropout rates for the past four years. The event completion rate…

Poverty is a phrase that has been constantly linked to failures in American schools. The beginning of every year sees an increasing number of children enrolling in schools. Most of these children come from poor socio economic backgrounds with needs that schools, even well funded ones, are unprepared to meet. Most people tend not to understand what…

Education Sector commissioned an earlier version of this collection of essays in conjunction with a March 2012 event "Getting to 2014: The Choices and Challenges Ahead." This updated version includes new essays and a revised introduction. The aim of these essays is to present ideas, elicit feedback, and encourage productive dialogue…