PK-12 district-level administrators have been asked to navigate an increasingly complex policy landscape concerning gender-diversity reforms. We apply sensemaking theory to examine administrators' understanding of legal and policy protections for trans and gender diverse (TGD) students. Using 36 interviews with administrators and policy…

This article provides a "thick" understanding of how public school parents understand their decision to opt their children out of standardized tests. In it, Amy Shuffelton draws from qualitative research interviews with Chicago parents to explore how three mothers connected opting out of standardized testing to their broader commitments…

The edTPA, a national performance assessment for teacher candidates, has seen rapid adoption across the country since its development in 2009. Against the national backdrop of high stakes testing and accountability, the edTPA was developed to be an indicator of teachers' readiness to teach. The varying perspectives and responses to edTPA in…

This article offers the author's views about the business aspects of school administration in the U.S., and discusses the mass school closures in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago. These closures were intended to improve the educational systems within those cities, yet none have benefited from these reforms. She also explains the…

Integrating our schools is a goal that many of us share. But some seem to have given up on the idea, as plans to boost racial diversity have come under attack, and as the fixation on test scores has narrowed some people's concept of a good education. There is, however, new hope: integration by socioeconomic status. It's a cost-effective, legally…

District-led, dramatic change efforts in failing schools--including turnarounds and school closures--often face strong resistance from families and communities. Resistance may be based on years of tension and distrust between districts and communities, failed past school improvement efforts, or a lack of understanding about the chasm between a…

Ullysses Tucker likes a good challenge. After spending the first 20 years of his career working in media, he entered the development profession in 2000. He worked for the State University of New York Plattsburgh, New Jersey's Montclair State University, Louisiana's Grambling State University, and Western Illinois University before joining London…

The institutional environment of America's schools has changed substantially as government regulation has focused increasingly on the core technical work of schools--instruction. The authors explore the school administrative response to this changing environment, describing how government regulation becomes embodied in the formal structure of four…

This article will focus on the efforts of the State of Illinois to desegregate Chicago Public Schools between 1971 and 1979. The article also examines the responsibility taken on by the State of Illinois to desegregate schools and the limits between establishing the mechanisms to desegregate and the ability to accomplish those goals in Chicago.…

Previous research indicated that Catholic high schools in the United States were not addressing the topic of homosexuality in any significant and systematic way prior to the mid-1990s, though practitioners in Catholic high schools have begun to address the topic in recent years. This study, in sampling seven Catholic schools in the greater Chicago…