Using critical race theory (CRT) as both our theory and analytical framework, we interrogated vocational, career, and technical education (VCTE) policy as a racial instrument. We applied key CRT themes to examine both primary sources; including historical and contemporary VCTE Acts (e.g., Perkins I-V) and Congressional reports; and secondary…

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions "Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College" (2023) and "Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina et al." (2023), hereafter collectively referred to as "SFFA v. Harvard," have garnered attention, especially among…

The 50th anniversary of the Marland Report provides an opportunity to reflect on its impact on the field of gifted education. A critical question is how the Marland Report addressed the need for equity, especially since the Marland federal definition made no explicit mention of culturally, linguistically, or economically different gifted students.…

In "Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College ("SFFA")," the United States Supreme Court revisited an issue that had been litigated before it twenty years earlier. In two separate cases brought against the University of Michigan, the issue was whether it was a violation of the Constitution…

Fifty years after the Supreme Court issued its ruling in "San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez," the trajectory of school finance desegregation has shifted from expansive federal hopes to narrower state efforts. Attempts to address many of the disparities continue to be constrained by the complex and intersecting nature…

In this article Danielle Marie Greene-Bell and Francis A. Pearman II examine racial disparities in school closures across the United States, with a particular interest in majority Black schools. Using survival analysis and longitudinal data, they find that majority Black schools are far more likely to close than non-majority Black schools and that…

In the last decade, many political conflicts over K-12 education in the United States have increasingly divided along party lines. While it may seem like this development represents a sudden and surprising departure from a long-standing tradition of bipartisanship, I argue that the politics of education has been gradually growing more exposed to…

More progress is needed to achieve equity in racial and gender representation in the push to diversify the physical sciences. In order to continue moving towards representation and equity, there is a need for more analytic tools that can help us understand where we are and how we got here. This may also enable meaningful systemic change. In this…

This essay describes Open Admissions in the South during postsecondary desegregation, providing a comparative analysis of policies and debates in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Georgia. Statewide Open Admissions policies emerged in the 1960s as part of superficial efforts to comply with desegregation but were ineffective; consequently, they were…

This position paper examines the intersectionality of race and disability and the impact on inclusive postsecondary educational (PSE) opportunities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Based on a history of segregation and oppression those who are Black and those who have an intellectual disability (ID) share many of the same…

Background: Over the past decade, courts increasingly have considered cases that involve clashes between public, secular private, and religious institutions in education. Such clashes appear to have intensified as recently as the 2019-2020 Supreme Court term, and the confirmation of Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Court in 2020 suggests…

This article focuses on the first African American students at two southern land-grant universities, North Carolina State University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech). Although these institutions integrated in the 1950s, most of the current desegregation scholarship focuses on other southern institutions in…

The aim of this essay is to advance understandings of current efforts to democratize disciplined approaches to educational innovation and improvement in the US and other countries, with a specific focus on the macro-level policy contexts of improvement research in education. In the US, earlier analyses examined these policy contexts from a…

This paper uses a hybrid policy analysis lens primarily informed by the work of Derrick Bell to make the case that policies and reforms in mathematics education were not designed to address the needs of historically excluded learners; instead, these policies and reforms are often designed and enacted to protect the economic, technological, and…

In this critique, race is centralized to draw attention to the role it plays in the complex evolution of response to intervention, past and present. I use a critical race theory analytical lens to focus on how the dominant narrative serves as a framework within institutional and political structures in support of the approach. A brief overview of…