First generation and low income college students continue to experience outcome differences despite higher education’s efforts to reduce inequality. Despite abundant research exploring intelligence mindset, there have been few attempts to explore relationships between mindset and scarcity. To reduce this gap in knowledge, and support student success, this study explored relationships between scarcity and beliefs about intelligence – including the intelligence mindset of students and the failure mindset of parents – as well as the connection between scarcity and student demographics. Survey research design was used, and participants were gathered using a census of undergraduate students of a Midwest university in spring 2020 (N = 9,760). Results indicate scarcity continues to be of vital importance to the discussion about inequity in higher education, as found in the direct relationships between perceived scarcity and student demographics, and the indirect relationship of perceived scarcity with intelligence mindset through perceived failure mindset of parents.

This report explores the extent, trends, and consequences of academic undermatch, defined as students enrolling at an institution of relatively less selectivity than what their academic qualifications grant them access to, including non-enrollment. Using a sample of two cohorts of Central Texas high school graduates, this report finds that undermatch occurs among all students, but that it was more extensive for low-income students and among students with average qualification levels. Low-income students were found to undermatch at 65.1 percent and non low-income students at 53.9 percent of those who enroll. Between 2008 and 2009, undermatch increased among all students; among the highest qualified low-income students it increased by 10 percentage points. The majority of undermatched students were found to be enrolled at two-year over four-year institutions. A negative relationship between qualification level and annual earnings was found in the earnings of students who did not enroll. This report provides a set of recommendations to address undermatch and college access among low-income students in Central Texas. / text

The achievement gap in American schools between middle class students and students from poverty is well documented. This paper outlines the findings of a study designed to explore the experience and conscientization of struggling students from poverty. The argument will be made that poverty can be viewed as a culture and that this view may shed significant light on the dynamics of the achievement gap. Further, using the construct of poverty as a culture provides real life applications that have the potential to impact the achievement gap. The study explored the lived experiences in a public school setting of intermediate students from poverty, hoping to capture their voice and insights. The research utilized a Critical Pedagogical Approach to attempt to understand why American schools struggle with these populations and what could be done to address the achievement gap.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 02, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Virginia Commonwealth University, 2009. / Prepared for: Dept. of Educational Studies. Title from title-page of electronic thesis. Bibliography: leaves 114-128.

Thesis advisor: Ana Martinez-Aleman / College student engagement has been linked to a host of positive educational outcomes including academic performance and persistence. Problematically, many low-income college students are not able to get involved within the social system of higher education due to the costs associated with participation in the co-curricular events and activities that comprise so much of the full college experience. This mixed methods study explored the effect on student engagement of the Pinnacle Alliance (PA) - an intervention program designed to remove these cost barriers for low-income students at Lakefield University (LU), a private, highly selective, religiously-affiliated institution located in the Northeast United States. An electronic survey was administered to a sample of Lakefield undergraduate students concerning their involvement in co-curricular activities. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between participation in the Pinnacle Alliance and student engagement. While the quantitative findings indicate a non-significant relationship, subsequent focus groups were conducted to further examine and contextualize the effects of the Pinnacle Alliance on low-income students. Qualitative findings from the focus group suggest that the Pinnacle Alliance is an extremely important resource for many low-income LU students. The PA allowed these students to make participation choices free of the financial barriers they often face. In addition, PA-participating students reported feeling a greater sense of community and that they fit in more at LU. However, these students made clear that fitting in and belonging were not the reasons they chose to participate in the program; rather the elevated feelings of fitting in and belonging were the result of their participation. Finally, findings from focus groups conducted with students who were eligible for the Pinnacle Alliance but chose not to participate revealed that beyond financial constraints, motivational constraints can also inhibit engagement. Non-participating students cited lack of time, lack of interest, lack of awareness, and social stigma as the four major reasons behind their decisions to not be more involved with the Pinnacle Alliance. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

In order to meet the educational and economic demands of the United States in the future, institutions of higher education must increase the number of students who persist to the completion of a certificate or degree program, especially low-income students and students of color (Carnivale and Desrochers, 2004). To increase the persistence and completion rates of these students at community colleges, national initiatives, such as the Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count initiative, have emphasized the importance of creating institutional environments in which planning and improvement efforts are data-driven (Achieving the Dream, 2005). This study explored the perceptions of faculty members, administrators, and staff directly involved in establishing this data-driven environment, also known as a “culture of evidence,” and the extent to which those perceptions had disseminated through the larger college community. Through the use of a case study and focus groups using Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA) methods, the development of a “culture of evidence” at two Texas community colleges was examined as perceived by college constituents involved in its creation and by a group of college constituents indirectly influenced by their efforts. The emerging themes are discussed in their relation to promoting and maintaining a data- driven culture in the future. / text

Scholars have long explored the lack of diversity in gifted-and-talented education and specifically the role that gifted-and-talented test performance plays as a barrier to access. However, there is limited work, particularly quantitative work, examining the ways in which policies perpetuate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities within the education system.I build upon the extant research by examining each stage of the admissions process, employing quantitative methods, and using a comprehensive sample of longitudinal admissions and enrollment data from New York City. This dissertation explores the diversity of gifted-and-talented programs by addressing two research questions: 1) Do families who request testing, test, apply, and enroll their children in gifted-and-talented programs reflect diverse backgrounds? and 2) Do gifted-and-talented admissions criteria and priorities, specifically test score criteria and sibling priority, advantage certain students? My results suggest that from the onset, families engaging with the first step of the gifted-and-talented admission process are not representative of the student population at large. While a more diverse group of families request testing and test, as families progress further along in navigating the admissions process, at each stage the families look more like one another. The filtering nature of the admissions process leaves far lower proportions of low-income, Black, and Hispanic families enrolling in gifted-and-talented programs. I also find that admissions rules advantage certain students to varying degrees. My findings reveal that test score cutoffs severely exacerbate the lack of diversity in gifted programs, giving the already advantaged families a further advantage. Contrastingly, I find that sibling priority does not exacerbate the lack of diversity to the same extent. Overall, the likelihood of receiving an offer does not vary by most sociodemographic characteristics. However, once a child meets the test score criteria, the score plays a far less important role in determining offers to a top choice program, and sibling preferences give families a strong advantage in receiving an offer to their first choice gifted-and-talented program.

The Black population in the United States is undergoing a significant transformation. Over the last four decades, the African immigrant population has increased from 130,000 to 2 million, making them one of the fastest growing groups in the United States. Yet, notably absent from much of the discourse on how immigration is changing our society is a serious engagement with the dynamic changes happening within the country’s Black population. This dissertation examines how these demographic realities are experienced in young people’s daily lives. I use the case of low-income, adolescent children of West African immigrants to understand how processes of immigrant integration and racialization unfold generationally across racial and ethnic lines. I focus specifically on their identity-work and acculturation in the context of families, local institutions, and transnational social fields. Methodologically, I draw on ethnographic observations and interviews with 71 second-generation West African teenagers in three New York City public high schools. The dissertation consists of five substantive chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the ethnic and racial identifications of second-generation West Africans, some of the meanings they make around these identities, and begins to delve into the contextual mechanisms shaping these identities, namely their families, neighborhoods and law enforcement. Chapters 3 and 4 respectively analyze the role of transnational visits to parent home countries and religion on acculturation and understandings of Blackness and Africanness, among other identities. The final chapter, Chapter 5, explores three mechanisms shaping the selective acculturation of African immigrant youth: adoption of American cultural features, maintenance of ethnically distinct features, and the introduction of African cultural forms. My research makes three contributions. First, by placing adolescent children at the center of my analysis, I show how these young people are both making and made by a unique sociohistorical and political context that has significant consequences for their racial and ethnic identity-work. Second, it contributes to understandings about the relationship between socioeconomic status and second-generation immigrant integration. Contrary to arguments that second-generation identification and acculturation are patterned by class, I find that low-income African immigrant youth selectively acculturate into American society and maintain strong ethnic identities similar to their middle-class counterparts. The third contribution provides evidence that as immigrants, their children and their host communities continually interact through institutions like schools and neighborhoods, a mutual cultural reconstitution process occurs that fundamentally transforms both immigrants and the cultural landscape from which communities in the host society fashion an “American” identity. Taken together, in shedding light on second-generation Black immigrant racialization processes, this dissertation challenges assumptions about low-income Black youth and offers a dynamic, agentic and relational understanding of immigrant integration. It also highlights how broader meanings of immigrant integration and Blackness in the United States are fundamentally changing.