Purpose: There is growing recognition of the importance of educator diversity. The purpose of this paper is to examine the production, placement and employment of school leaders as assistant principals, principals and school leaders in Texas by the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender over 23 years. Design/methodology/approach: This is a quantitative study that employs multilevel logistic regression analysis to examine using 25 years of educator employment data from Texas. Findings: The authors find descriptive evidence of an increase in diversity of school leaders driven by a decreasing percentage of white men educators and an increasing percentage of Latina educators. Important differences, however, emerge when examining assistant principal vs principal positions, particularly with respect to the odds of being hired. The authors find black male and Latino educators are more likely than white male educators to be hired as an assistant principal but are less likely than white male educators to be hired as a principal. Women educators, regardless of race/ethnicity were less likely to be hired as assistant principals or principals relative to white male educators. Women of color had the lowest odds of being hired in any position relative to white male educators. With respect to school leader preparation program accountability, the authors find few program characteristics associated with placement and differences between programs explained very little of the variation in placement rates, bringing into question efforts to hold programs accountable for such outcomes. Originality/value: A longitudinal examination of racial/ethnic and gender intersectionality over 25 years is a unique contribution to the study of inequitable access to school leadership positions.

I examine whether academic motivation and engagement—conditions that advocates consider mechanisms for the effect of dual enrollment—account for the relationship between dual enrollment and academic performance. Few studies examine the claimed mechanisms that account for the impact of dual enrollment, which leaves the processes through which dual enrollment influences a student’s college experience as a black box. Using data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, I find a positive direct effect of dual enrollment on first-year college GPA, which remains even after controlling for precollege variables. I further find students who participated in dual enrollment are more academically motivated and engaged than nonparticipants. Although dual enrolled students are more academically motivated and engaged in class than nonparticipants these indicators generally account for less than 20% of the effect of dual enrollment on academic performance. Finally, for some students (e.g., students who earned college credit through dual enrollment but not though examination), participation in dual enrollment exerts a stronger effect on first-year college GPA at midselective and very selective institutions than at highly selective institutions.

We examine whether dual enrolled students display greater levels of college readiness than nonparticipants. Advocates assert that dual enrollment improves students’ college readiness, but despite these assertions, few researchers have evaluated this relationship. Moreover, researchers that do consider whether dual enrollment improves college readiness examine this relationship while students participate in dual enrollment or shortly thereafter. Unlike traditional measures of college readiness that tend to emphasize the cognitive domain of college readiness, we use measures that integrate both cognitive and noncognitive domains of college readiness. We find that students who participated in dual enrollment tend to be more college ready than those who did not earn college credit in high school. The exception is that there is no statistical difference between dual enrollees and non-accelerators in their key transition knowledge and skills. The magnitude of the dual enrollment effect is second only to gender.

Rising student attrition, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has resulted in increased calls for higher education officials to better understand factors associated with increasing persistence rates, especially from the first- to second year of college. Though many studies have documented the influence of the frequency of student–faculty interactions on student persistence, less research has focused on the quality of those interactions, including potential mediating influences. To address these issues, this study used longitudinal data from 8,475 students among 44 four-year institutions to explore whether the quality of student–faculty interactions influences student persistence and whether student satisfaction mediates this relationship. Guided by theoretical models of persistence, we found that even in the presence of a range of potential confounders, students’ perceived quality of student–faculty interactions increased the odds of persistence to the second year of college. Furthermore, results from a Karlson–Holm–Breen (KHB) decomposition analysis suggest this relationship occurred indirectly through students’ satisfaction with the overall college experience.