Educational Researcher

Brown v. Board of Education has played a central role in imagining educational justice in the United States. However, the lessons that we should draw from school desegregation is contested terrain, and desegregation efforts have largely failed both to grapple with the country’s multiracial constituency and to offer a positive vision for schools. In this essay, we use theoretical conceptualizations of justice, relational theories of race, and research literature to offer a more robust vision of public schooling for a multiracial democracy. This multidimensional, situated, and relational framework is one powerful tool for those designing research, policies, and practices that help us move toward multiracial democracy.

Students often become homeless due to conventional, economic instability; however, they also become homeless from natural disasters. We provide initial empirical evidence comparing these pathways to homelessness in the context of Houston and Hurricane Harvey. Analyzing 7 years of data on 321,439 students using a comparative interrupted time-series approach incorporating student-level fixed effects, we find students who became homeless due to Harvey were more representative of district students overall and had more similar educational outcomes after the storm. Conversely, students who became homeless due to conventional reasons had more adverse outcomes, which improved after identification. We discuss these findings in light of the differential social constructions of these subgroups and conclude with implications for policy and practice.

Studies consistently show that minoritized students benefit from having a teacher of the same race/ethnicity. We extend this literature by examining educational impacts of exposure to same-race/ethnicity professional staff, including administrators, instructional coaches, guidance counselors, and special education specialists. Students interact with these staff less frequently than teachers, yet staff of color may also serve as role models, support culturally relevant practices, and help prevent discrimination. Using within-student and within-school variation in statewide Maryland data, we find that higher shares of same-ethnicity staff improve test scores and modestly reduce suspensions for Hispanic students. For Black students, exposure to non-Black, non-White professionals of color is associated with higher English language arts performance, although these effects are smaller—about one-fifth the size of teacher effects.

As international student mobility increases, research on students’ experiences with race and racism has expanded. However, much of current scholarship relies heavily on U.S.-based racial theories, often neglecting how race operates fluidly across global contexts. This conceptual article revisits the concept of “race” by extending critical race theory and raciolinguistics beyond U.S. and Western borders to examine racism and racialization as global phenomena. It argues that international students’ racial identities are shaped by preexisting racial discourses in their home countries, reinforced by global structures of racialized power, and continuously reshaped as they navigate transnational social fields. By broadening the theoretical scope of race, this article highlights the need for a globally inclusive race framework in international student research.

Fenwick asserts that the failure to integrate Black principals and teachers into desegregating public schools remains the unfulfilled promise of Brown and has resulted in four traumas that continue to stymie the nation’s progress toward the conjoined goals of racial justice and educational equity. Brown was not intended to simply mean that African American and White students were to be educated side by side in order to achieve integrated schools. Often overlooked, many legal decisions subsequent to Brown asserted that the criterion for knowing that integration was achieved was the racial integration of district and school leadership and the teaching force.

Achievement gaps in school readiness between dual language learners (DLLs) and their English-only peers persist, in part because common assessment practices do not fully capture DLLs’ abilities. Using the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey, a nationally representative sample of Head Start children, this study examines whether DLLs’ performance varies by assessment language. Applying a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we found that DLLs who barely failed the language screening and were assessed in Spanish for mathematics outperformed those who barely passed and were assessed in English. These findings reveal biases in assessment practices that may misrepresent DLLs’ abilities, reinforcing educational inequities. Results underscore the need for linguistically responsive assessments that more accurately reflect DLLs’ mathematical competencies.

India’s multilingual classrooms require more than formal language policy; they require communicative pedagogies that enable equitable participation in learning. Although India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 emphasizes mother tongue instruction, implementation often overlooks how teachers steer through linguistic diversity in practice. This essay reviews emerging research on teacher-student communication across Indian classrooms, foregrounding adaptive strategies such as translanguaging, visual scaffolding, and peer mediation. These practices, although essential, remain undervalued in teacher education and curriculum design. Introducing the framework of “communicative justice,” the essay argues that meaningful inclusion requires recognizing students’ linguistic repertoires and supporting teachers’ communicative agency. It calls for systemic investment in multilingual pedagogy, inclusive assessment, and discourse-based research to align policy with classroom realities.

This study examined changes in kindergarten redshirting and retention practices in Delaware since the COVID-19 pandemic. Using student-level data from fall 2010 to fall 2023, we found that redshirting rates spiked dramatically in fall 2021, with the largest relative increases among historically underrepresented groups including Black, Hispanic, and low-income students. Retention showed a long-term declining trend that was disrupted only in 2021, when rates returned to pre-pandemic levels. These patterns suggest both practices operated as parallel strategies for securing more typical kindergarten experiences. These demographic shifts have important implications for classroom composition and instructional planning in post-pandemic elementary education.

In many states, including Massachusetts, demand for high-quality career and technical education (CTE) has grown faster than program supply, raising concerns about equitable access. Using 15 cohorts of administrative data, this brief examines how participation in high-quality CTE has changed across students’ demographic groups. While overall participation and concentration have increased, these gains are unbalanced: Female students have become better represented, while Hispanic/Latino students and English language learners (ELLs) have not. Our findings suggest that underrepresentation among Hispanic/Latino students appears tied to their school access and choice, whereas ELLs face persistent within-school barriers to concentrating in high-quality CTE pathways.

Evaluators “save the best for last” by systematically elevating the final year-end observation scores for novices or low-performing teachers. Examining 5,251 K–12 teachers, we document a striking reversal: evaluator scores typically fell below teacher self-assessments across initial and midyear observations but exceeded them by approximately 0.25 SD in final year-end observations. This pattern was robust to unobserved differences across annual teacher-evaluator pairings, the instructional domains observed, and observation timing. The data suggest that evaluation systems are not implemented uniformly across performance tiers, revealing tensions between accountability and developmental support that merit explicit acknowledgment in evaluation framework design.

Teacher staffing challenges were pervasive throughout the pandemic, but the downturn in student enrollment combined with the end of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds leaves considerable uncertainty about the postpandemic teacher labor market. We use data on new teacher endorsements and job postings scraped from district hiring websites in Washington to measure postpandemic supply and demand for teachers both overall and by subject area. We find that between 2022 and 2024, the supply of new teachers in Washington exceeded demand for teachers in the aggregate, but demand for special education and science teachers considerably outpaced the supply of new endorsements in these areas.

Extending findings from a 26-year longitudinal study of educational opportunity, we examine whether opportunities are related to the educational attainment and earnings of children from lower-income households (n = 226) as a function of when in a child’s development they occur. We compare the predictive power of opportunities accrued within three key developmental stages—early childhood, middle childhood, or adolescence—with the combined power of opportunities accrued across these stages. Our findings point to the value of educational opportunity in all three stages, particularly for educational attainment.

Residential instability is linked to lower educational attainment, but research—particularly quantitative research—often overlooks the causes underlying residential moves and the differential effects of forced and voluntary mobility. Using longitudinal data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine how different trajectories of residential mobility shape high school completion among low-income children. We find that both forced and voluntary moves are associated with lower graduation rates. Repeated moves and moves during adolescence are also linked to lower graduation rates, while eviction-specific moves are not uniquely predictive of graduation.

Non-teaching staff comprise over half of all school employees, and their turnover may be consequential for school operation, culture, and student success, yet we lack evidence documenting their attrition. We use 17 years (2007–2023) of administrative data from Oregon to examine mobility and exit among teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, licensed staff, and non-licensed staff. Although teacher turnover dominates turnover conversations, teachers are consistently the most stable employee group, even as turnover surged following the COVID-19 pandemic. School factors, such as colleague experience, predict turnover rates for all employees, but within-school turnover between staff groups is not highly correlated, and associations with some school context factors vary by employee groups. Results suggest that employee turnover is not a homogeneous phenomenon across staffing groups.

With growing concerns about school violence and teacher victimization in U.S. schools, it remains unclear if administrator support is enough to address teacher safety, anxiety and stress, and retention. Using a national sample of 5,550 pre-K–12th-grade teachers, we examined the effect of administrative support on retention intentions, the mediating effect of perceived safety and anxiety and stress, and how teacher victimization by students moderates associations between administrator support and teacher safety, anxiety and stress, and retention intentions. Path analysis revealed that administrator support related to retention intentions directly and indirectly through teacher safety and anxiety and stress. Teacher victimization by students moderated these relations such that higher rates of victimization weakened the relationship between administrator support and retention intentions.

In this review/essay article, the author argues that education researchers and educators should attend to visual elements in classrooms as ambient identity cues to allow for socio-spatial belonging among minoritized students. The author proposes the application of critical race aesthetics to notice, challenge, and change inequitable ambient cues that (re)create oppression and privilege. The author presents case vignettes from research with elementary STEM teachers and Black and Brown students to illustrate the role of images in meaning-making of STEM spaces. The author offers methods to apply the lens of critical race aesthetics to teacher and school leader education to improve equity. The author discusses implications for education research in terms of advancing applied theories and equity effort.

STEM deserts, similar to education deserts, are rural, suburban, and urban areas where students have limited access to school-based STEM curriculum and coursework opportunities. Using administrative data from the Houston Independent School District following a state policy change to high school graduation requirements, this study develops measures of STEM deserts and identifies the students most likely to live in them. Findings reveal that Black and Asian/Pacific Islander students, students from non-English-speaking households, and those from lower socioeconomic neighborhoods are disproportionately likely to live in STEM deserts compared to White students, students from English-speaking households, and those from higher socioeconomic neighborhoods.

The FAFSA Simplification Act altered the federal aid form to minimize barriers to completion and improve aid delivery. Despite these potential benefits, legal, technical, and logistical hurdles led to delays in implementation, creating uncertainty for families and colleges. We descriptively examine changes in California’s FAFSA submissions, using regression analysis to investigate differences in whether students resubmitted the FAFSA. Overall submissions increased modestly, but freshman applications exhibited large declines, with many failing to meet California’s deadline for its generous state aid program. This suggests many students may be enrolling, but without the support of state or federal financial aid. Although FAFSA refiling rates decreased for enrolled students, we observe higher rates of state aid receipt and public college enrollment.

JEL Classification Codes: I22, I23, I24, I28

Using nationally representative data from 2000 to 2021, we examine the distribution of teacher characteristics and qualifications over time, with an emphasis on early career teacher (ECT) qualifications, access to induction supports, and perceptions of preparedness and their distribution across majority-minority, high-poverty, and rural schools. We find the proportion of ECTs and first-year teachers has remained mostly stable and even declined slightly between 2000 and 2021. Despite efforts to diversify the profession in recent years, there is little change in the proportion of teachers of color. ECTs have greater access to induction supports and feelings of preparedness on most measures over time, particularly in nonrural schools. However, we find growing disparities between teacher qualifications and preparedness in rural and nonrural school contexts.

Labor organizing efforts grew following the COVID-19 pandemic in American higher education institutions. This research brief examines unionization trends at private colleges and universities from 2007 through 2023, revealing staff as the main force behind unionization attempts, followed by contingent faculty. The Service Employees International Union plays a significant role in representing college and university employees. A disproportionate number of elections occurred in a handful of union-friendly states and well-resourced institutions. This study underscores the importance of understanding historic unionization efforts, shedding light on often overlooked staff categories, such as maintenance and campus security.