Decades of research point to the benefits of parent involvement in education. Research has also shown that white, middle-class parents are disproportionately involved. Charter schools, as schools of choice, have been assumed to have fewer involvement barriers for minority and low-income parents, but a 2007 survey of charter leaders found that…

Many colleges and universities in the United States offer summer programs for their incoming students. While programs are structured and administered in a variety of ways and target various student populations, the most common type of summer bridge program aims to serve historically underrepresented students and students of low socioeconomic…

Since 1965 the federal government has attempted to provide low socioeconomic status students with equal access to postsecondary education through the Higher Education Act and its multiplicative programmatic efforts. Implemented as one such program in 1998, the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP, has been…

If the nation is to truly meet the goal of every child a graduate, everybody must hold schools responsible for graduating every student with a regular diploma, particularly poor and minority students. Unfortunately, current education accountability systems virtually ignore high school graduation rates. This brief summarizes such shortcomings in…

We have updated Ferree and Hall's (1990) study of the way gender and race are constructed through pictures in introductory sociology textbooks. Ferree and Hall looked at 33 textbooks published between 1982 and 1988. We replicated their study by examining 3,085 illustrations in a sample of 27 textbooks, most of which were published between 2002 and…

The support experiences of Black graduate students who graduated from a major southern research university between 1962 to 2003 were examined in a comprehensive survey that explored three areas: (a) relationships with faculty, (b) students, and (c) the institution. Characteristics that distinguish this study from others include the large sample of…

This article features Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), a systems-based method that offers a schoolwide approach to improving student behavior. PBIS was developed at the University of Oregon and has been shown to work at all grade levels and be effective in districts with greater concentrations of poverty and higher…

This paper extends earlier research into the responses of local authorities and schools to the requirements of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 (RRAA) in relation to minority ethnic pupils and exclusion practices. The original study drew on evidence from national exclusions data, a wide range of official documentation and visit data from 85…

This paper discusses the difficulties of establishing a clear count of UK higher education students in terms of the categories used for widening participation, such as occupational background or ethnicity. Using some of the best and most complete data available, such as the annual figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the paper then…

While the existence of racial disproportionality has been well documented, the causes of disproportionality are less clear. Studies identifying contributing factors have relied largely on analyses of state and national data sets, which may lack the robust data necessary to fully explain the factors related to this issue. Further, a limitation of…

Although the author is a computer scientist, he has been involved with issues of diversity for many years. He developed an online gamelike environment to teach inner-city kids algebra, using culturally relevant learning technologies, and he has applied data-mining techniques to help universities admit diverse classes without relying on just one…

In fall 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a three-year project (IB Access Project) with International Baccalaureate (IB) to increase participation of minority students and students in poverty in the Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP). The IB Access Project seeks to do four things: (1) Improve teacher practice…

A gap exists between the degree to which African Americans embrace the cultural value of higher education attainment (Butchart, 1988; Du Bois, 1935; Mickelson & Greene, 2006; Washington, 1900; Woodson, 1919) and the reality of their unsatisfactory undergraduate degree attainment at traditional white institutions (TWIs) (Allen, 1992; Allen,…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) House Passes FY 2011 Spending Bill: Bill Cuts U.S. Department of Education Funding by $5 Billion; Title I, School…

The Students and Technology in Academia, Research, and Service (STARS) Alliance is a nationally-connected system of regional partnerships among higher education, K-12 schools, industry and the community with a mission to broaden the participation of women, under-represented minorities and persons with disabilities in computing (BPC). Each regional…