In response to a call for research on using the SATs and ACTs for U.S.-based college and university admissions, researchers systematically interrogated the literature surrounding both tests, using a framework for validity evidence built upon the "Standards of Educational and Psychological Testing" and Kane's contemporary view of…

Teacher vacancies have been a long-standing issue in U.S. public schools, only made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. Vacancies tend to be concentrated in high-poverty, high-minority schools and hard-to-staff subjects like special education and STEM. States have implemented various policies to decrease turnover, including offering teachers bonuses…

This study complements literature on state policymaking by exploring one state's achievement trends and policymaking during a period of remarkable achievement gains. I use mixed methods, drawing on hierarchical linear modeling and semi-structured interviews with policy actors, to explore the case of Tennessee in the post-recession period. Results…

The massification of higher education in Argentina has created a central dilemma for public universities: how to uphold open access while ensuring that traditional literacy standards do not exclude the most disadvantaged students. This qualitative study examines how writing instructors and program administrators at three public universities in the…

Reducing the socio-economic achievement gap is a key goal of education policy internationally. Since 2017, the stated intention in Ireland is to use the Pobal HP Deprivation Index to identify schools serving high proportions of disadvantaged students. In spite of this, little published research has compared the performance of the HP index to…

Many states report school performance grades as a way to inform the public about school quality. However, past research has shown that when these grades drew largely on proficiency-based measures, they served to capture variation in school and community demographics rather than school quality. We extend this literature by examining whether a…

This study examines the movement of students in suburban Detroit through open enrollment, or inter-district school choice. We examine whether absolute levels and changes in the district enrollment of Black, economically disadvantaged, and nonresident students are perceived as racial threats by suburban families, leading them to exit their local…

Drawing on perspectives from top state-regional universities' authorities (known as "rectors") and public statistics on higher education, we discuss the sources of regional inequality in the Chilean university system. While there is scarce research on regional inequality for Chilean higher education, it is a well-recognized concern…

While many scholars recognize and criticize the politicization of education policies, scholarly attention to the strategies politicians utilize to politicize educational policy discourses remains limited. Focusing on the officials of Ghana's two major political parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), as…

Research has shown that Title I's "comparability" provision causes gaps in noncategorical per pupil teacher funding. Using a unique dataset that merges 2009-2010 New York City (NYC) Department of Education value-added scores, school finance data, and school demographic data, this study not only confirms that NYC Title I elementary…

While parents of students with disabilities (SWD) select schools according to various factors, schools also choose students through different sorting mechanisms. Thus, parents of SWD may need to employ different strategies to enroll their child in their preferred school. We employed an intersectional approach for studying school choice,…

This paper explores how "English learners (ELs)" or who we prefer to call "multilingual learners" are labeled and positioned in policy documents and leading education research documents respectively. Attending to the urgent call for serving the growing number of linguistically and culturally diverse learners, this study delves…

Each year, the federal government provides billions of dollars in support for low-income families in their acquisition of housing. In this analysis, we examine how several of these subsidized housing programs, public housing and Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) financed housing, relate to patterns of school segregation for children. We use…

This study examined a sample of plans that states submitted to the U.S. Education Department in 2015, pursuant to requirements in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title I, Part A. Plans were aimed at redressing inequities in access to qualified teachers as this problem has emerged in states and districts across the country. A…

Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), we explored how educational leaders and policymakers in Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Argentina address complex issues while responding to -- and in fact, developing -- broader understandings (discourses) on the role of higher education in Latin America. Fairclough's (1993) theory of discourse underscores that…