This dissertation comprises three empirical studies that examine the educational experiences and outcomes of students from historically marginalized backgrounds, with a focus on English Learners, refugees, and low‑income students. Collectively, these chapters investigate how school environments, timing of migration, and financial supports shape academic achievement and postsecondary trajectories. The first chapter evaluates whether charter schools provide academic benefits for English Learners, a rapidly growing population in Georgia’s K-12 system. Using administrative data from a large Georgia district from school years 2011-12 to 2023-24 and regression models with student fixed effects, I estimate the impact of charter attendance on standardized test performance. Results show modest gains in English Language Arts (0.04-0.08 SD) for charter attendees overall and larger benefits for English Learners, particularly those with early and sustained charter enrollment. These findings suggest that charter schools may offer meaningful, though modest, advantages for English Learners’ literacy development. The second chapter examines how arrival age influences postsecondary outcomes for refugee children. Using pooled 2010-2014 American Community Survey data and leveraging variation within country of origin and year of immigration, I estimate the relationship between arrival age and college attendance and degree attainment. Each additional year of arrival age reduces college attendance by 1.5 percentage points and degree attainment by 0.7 percentage points for refugees, with similar results for immigrants. These results indicate that timing of arrival, rather than refugee status itself, drives disparities in postsecondary attainment. The third chapter, coauthored with Drs. Carycruz Bueno, Lindsay Page, and Jonathan Smith, investigates the impact of Achieve Atlanta’s place‑based scholarship on academic and financial outcomes in college. Using detailed administrative data, we find that scholarship recipients borrow less, earn more credits, and achieve higher GPAs in their first semester with no evidence of institutional aid crowd‑out. These findings illuminate the scholarship’s role in promoting early college success by reducing financial strain and enabling students to engage more fully in their coursework.