This article reports on which families drew the child tax credit (CTC), prior to and during the implementation of President Joseph Biden's expanded program, based on repeated surveys of eligible parents or guardians and yielding nationally representative results. We find that the CTC before the 2021-22 Biden reform had gained widespread participation, although the bulk of tax benefits flowed to middle- and upper-income families. In turn, four in five eligible families drew benefits from the expanded CTC, according to our direct surveys, a higher take-up rate than earlier estimated. Poor households and single-parent families participated at lower rates, with disparities tied to race or ethnicity and school attainment. Initial lower participation by Hispanic families was partially mitigated as the expanded CTC penetrated into diverse communities. Low-income families reported more intense financial hardship by mid-2022 after expanded CTC refunds ended. We show how the take-up of entitlements remains conditioned by family attributes.

The segregation of Latinxs may explain their learning struggles. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with predominantly Latinx schools, many segregated schools have limited resources to support Latinxs' learning. We found Latinxs display higher mathematics growth between kindergarten and fourth grade when attending predominantly white (not middle-class) schools. The increasing number of Latinxs is also associated with growth. However, the prevalence of Latinxs mattered most for some Latinx subgroups. Schools with substantial counts of Latinxs and whites may better combine "traditional" and culturally-specific resources. Scholars must grapple with the assumptions associated with desegregation and examine mechanisms that support equitable schooling.

Abstract Many reform advocates on the political left and right ironically agree that common schools—state-run and uniform renditions of education—must die a quiet death. In its wake, a variety of school forms have sprouted on both sides of the Atlantic, animated by the embrace of market competition, private interests, and the progressive pursuit of fair and culturally responsive schools. This growing movement yields schools that serve particular families, including locally run charter, magnet, and dual-language schools, campuses that typically serve certain ethnic communities or particular curricular aims. This chapter describes the decline of mass schooling and the shift toward organizational pluralism, along with resulting effects on learning and social stratification. Institutional variety manifests plural civic spaces that become locally responsive and potentially segregated over time.

Policy makers in California intend to provide free preschool to all 4-year-olds solely within public schools by 2026, becoming the nation's second largest single pre-K program in the United States after Head Start. This initiative builds on the state's existing Transitional Kindergarten (TK) option that has served a modest share of 4-year-olds since 2010. Tracing the historical growth in TK enrollments, we find that just 30, mostly urban school districts, enrolled two-fifths of all children served by 2020, responding to funding incentives and displaying stronger organizational capacity. Meanwhile, one-third of California's nearly one thousand districts enrolled fewer than 12 TK children. Black, white, and Asian children remained disproportionally under-enrolled as a share of their respective populations, as enrollments climbed past 90,000 children prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Identifying factors that may explain widely differing gains in TK enrollment, merging education and local census data, we find the suburbs began to catch-up with cities in serving additional 4-year-olds, as well as districts offering school choice (e.g., charter schools). We discuss implications for other nations attempting to rapidly expand preschool, including the inequities that may inadvertently arise.

Neoliberal tenets have colored the past half-century of education reform, marked by top-down accountability, market competition, and regimented learning aims. Federal drift and post-pandemic recovery, along with economic uncertainty, will blur policy priorities going forward. Less noticed, local networks of pro-equity activists have come to challenge urban bureaucracies, while advancing fairness, diverse forms of schooling, respectful and rigorous social relations inside schools. This paper examines the case of Los Angeles, where a coalition of Black and Latina leaders, civil rights attorneys, social-justice nonprofits, and pedagogical reformers succeeded to progressively fund schools, extend college-prep courses, and decriminalize discipline. Student achievement, in turn, climbed steadily upward for nearly two decades, 2002 to 2019. This pluralist network of advocates carved-out a third civic terrain, challenging corporate elites and traditional labor leaders. Rooted in humanist ideals, these colorful activists countered the individualistic and competitive values of neoliberal advocates, while motivating lasting institutional change.

Diverse Latino families continue to settle in suburbs, hunting for better neighborhoods and educational opportunities. But do they discover more integrated schools relative to segregated city schools? We find that Latino children attending suburban elementary schools were exposed to a greater share of White peers nationwide between 2000 and 2015 than were Latinos attending urban schools. But exposure to White peers in suburbs declined on average during the period. Demographic forces within suburban districts, especially rising family poverty, contribute to worsening segregation of Latino children, as do institutional features. Districts enrolling fewer children and increasing spending per pupil remained more integrated during the period, as identified by two-level fixed-effect (Mundlak) estimation. Many heavily White districts served growing shares of Latino children without losing White families.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReply to RejoinderThe Key Question: Which Mechanisms Encased in Race or Class Drive Segregation’s Effects?Bruce FullerBruce FullerBerkeley Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Education Ahead of Print Sponsored by the Penn State College of Education Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/724409 HistoryPublished online April 11, 2023 © 2023 The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Can robust preschool initiatives - such as New York City's universal entitlement -narrow disparities in children's learning? Or, might the quality of pre-K sites become regressively distributed, based on racial or economic features of neighborhoods? We map levels of quality observed across 1,791 pre-k sites, 2015 to 2019, finding that those situated in economically better-off census tracts host higher quality programs and developmental practices. Quality falls lower in pre-K sites situated in neighborhoods with larger shares of Black residents and sites enrolling higher percentages of Black children, relative to White or Asian American locales. Preschools run by community organizations display higher quality overall, compared with city schools, while the latter host stronger instructional activities. We discuss ways of mitigating against regressive features that may arise with pre-K entitlements, along with widening the field's conceptions of quality. (c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

OBJECTIVES:We investigate how Mexican-heritage mothers' socialization beliefs and strategies contribute to their preschool children's school readiness. While Latinx children typically start kindergarten with strong social competencies, they also start with less strong early literacy and math skills, in comparison with their non-Latinx peers. We propose that-paralleling Lareau's (2003) theory of "concerted cultivation," whereby White, middle-class parents purportedly display great intentionality in nurturing the academic and extracurricular skills of their children-Mexican-heritage mothers purposefully cultivate their children's social-emotional skills.METHODS:Using structured interviews and home observations over a 14-month period, we follow 23 Mexican-heritage mothers and their 24 preschool children.RESULTS:Drawing on ecocultural theory, Mexican-heritage mothers engage their preschool children in a concerted fashion to develop their social-emotional competence. Specifically, they: (a) articulate the role of children's social-emotional skills vis-à-vis academic skills related to school readiness; (b) delineate the character of their children's social-emotional skills; and (c) promote social-emotional skills through intention-filled parenting practices relevant to their cultural contexts.CONCLUSIONS:Understanding parents' "concerted cultivation" in differing cultural contexts may facilitate teachers' use of practices that better align with families' home practices and more effectively support the learning of Latinx children across academic domains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A novel set of civic activists arose in Los Angeles in the 1990s, gaining independence from neoliberal advocates and labor leaders to advance a variety of school reforms over the next three decades. In turn, student learning climbed steadily during the period. This paper first describes the rise of these “new pluralists” – a diverse coalition of black and Latina leaders, civil rights attorneys, pro-equity nonprofits, and pedagogical reformers – and sketches their efforts to equitably fund central-city schools, improve teacher quality and student engagement, and decriminalize discipline. I then review accumulating evidence on which institutional changes empirically predict gains in pupil outcomes, further informed by qualitative studies. These plural actors, rooted in humanist ideals, challenged the individualistic and competitive values of neoliberals. Carving-out a third civic space, they lifted achievement on average, but have yet to find policy strategies that narrow racial disparities in learning.

Purpose: Does the rising share of Latino students in US schools help to integrate previously White campuses or exacerbate racial and economic segregation over time? This article details trends in the segregation of Latino children enrolled in elementary schools, 2000–2015, then examines how evolving patterns differ among the nation’s school districts. Research Methods: We compiled enrollment data from schools, merging census data on the demographic and economic attributes of residents inside the boundaries of each district. Changes in the interaction and entropy measures of segregation are reported, illuminating levels of Latino segregation between districts and among schools within districts. Findings: Latino children were less likely to attend elementary schools with White peers in 2015 relative to 2000, stemming in part from growing Latino enrollments. The isolation of Latino children within certain schools inside districts did not change on average. Local variation in segregation levels is associated with the income of residents within districts, along with their nativity and home language. Just 13% of the nation’s districts enroll sufficient counts of Latino and White children to advance integration among constituent schools. Implications: Rising Latino enrollment in once lily-white schools does advance racial integration. But many Latino children enter increasingly segregated school districts in which poor students are isolated from middle-class peers. In the absence of interdistrict integration efforts, little progress to integrate Latino children will be possible.

State finance reforms have raised per-pupil spending and elevated the achievement of disadvantaged students over the past half-century. But we know little about how fresh funding may alter teacher staffing or the social and curricular organization of schools, mediating gains in learning. We find that US$1.1 billion in new yearly funding—arriving to Los Angeles high schools after California enacted a progressive weighted-pupil formula in 2013—led schools to rely more on novice and probationary teachers. Schools that enjoyed greater funding modestly reduced average class size and the count of teaching periods assigned to staff in five subsequent years. Yet, high-poverty schools receiving higher budget augmentations more often assigned novice teachers to English learners (ELs) and hosted declining shares of courses that qualified graduates for college admission. Mean achievement climbed overall, but EL and poor students fell further behind in schools receiving greater funding.

Gains in school spending helped to lift achievement over the past half century. But California’s ambitious effort—progressively distributing $23 billion in yearly funding to poorer districts—has yet to reduce disparities in learning. We theorize how administrators in districts and schools, given organizational habits and labor constraints, may fail to move quality resources to disadvantaged students. We identify the exogenous portion of California’s post-2013 reform, finding that schools receiving progressively targeted funding tended to hire inexperienced teachers and disproportionately assign novices to courses serving English learners. New funding expanded the array of courses in high schools, as access to college-preparatory classes by English learners declined. These unfair mechanisms operated most strongly in high-needs schools serving larger concentrations of poor students.

AbstractA variety of civic actors—government, associations, and local agencies—work to help parents advance the vitality of our youngest children. Empirical findings accumulating over the past half‐century identify benefits for infants and toddlers stemming from three policy models: paid leave for parents after a newborn arrives; regular pediatric assessments, including home visiting; and quality caregivers situated in homes or centers. We review what is known about the effects of these policies, along with constituent elements of quality (mediators) that operate proximal to children's health, cognitive, and emotional growth. Much has been learned about how such collective action, carried out by local organizations, advance infant–toddler development. Methodological advances foster new knowledge: moving closer to causal inferences and pinpointing social mechanisms that enrich infant–toddler settings. Less well understood is how policy levers can move the malleable elements of program quality to raise the magnitude or sustainability of program effects. We note the benefits of income‐support efforts for fragile families, while urging new work on how economic dynamics touch the capacity of parents and caregivers to better nurture infants and toddlers.