Chile has followed the international trend of implementing a standards-based reform, with the particularity of encompassing both academic and non-academic outcomes. Drawing on interview data from four school cases in Santiago, Chile, this study examines the role of attitudes in reform enactment, analyzing whether and how school actors' attitudes…

Three trends have characterized state policymaking for higher education in the 21st century: divestment, accountability, and race neutrality. These policy agendas are often justified as an attempt to optimize system efficiency and performance by making institutional actors (agents) responsive to the demands of state officials (principals). In this…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) reverses a trend toward centralization of education policy and instead provides greater authority to the states. This study explores states' interpretation and early implementation of ESSA's equity-related provisions. Using a qualitative case study approach, we find wide variation in the design and…

This qualitative case study examines how board members make sense of federal accountability policies and how their sensemaking shapes their use of assessment data as a policy instrument. Deviating from previous work on practitioner sensemaking, the participants' interpretations of assessments did not align with their ensuing use of the data.…

The purpose of this study is to examine changes in teachers' perception of their work during key periods of the accountability and assessment policy movement in the United States. We utilize a teacher perception of deprofessionalization and demoralization framework operationalized using the restricted Schools and Staffing Surveys data sets from…

This policy implementation study examines the experiences of four elementary school principals using photomethods. We employ Rancière and Merleau-Ponty's theorizations on "democracy" and "making sense" to understand the lived policy experiences of school principals and these individual's potential for practicing democratic…

In the United States, adult and workforce education (AE) seems to be located, simultaneously, both everywhere and nowhere in particular. Ongoing shifts in national economic demands and changes in requirements for training and education have brought learning in the adult years into the federal public policy arena. Sometimes referred to as lifelong…

The case study is an analysis of a state performance funding policy at a public historically Black college and university (HBCU). The policy attaches state funding to HBCU performance on measures like graduation rates and equity measures like the reduction in achievement gaps between Black and non-Black students. Participants liked that the policy…

Nationally, youth organizing groups have been gaining traction in their push for education reform; however, little research has considered how policymakers view their efforts. This study examines how 30 civic leaders in one under-resourced urban school district perceive the influence of a youth organizing group on educational policy decision…

In this article, we examine the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as an example of a unique node within larger policy networks composed of new policy entrepreneurs (e.g., venture philanthropists, think tanks, private "edubusinesses" and their lobbyists, advocacy organizations, and social entrepreneurs). These new policy…

Through a case study that highlights the role of rulemaking in the evolution of the "No Child Left Behind Act" (NCLB), this article provides strategies for educators who seek both to influence policy outcomes and to understand the dynamics of policymaking. This study examines the regulatory processes for NCLB, specifically related to the…

This qualitative case study extends the literature on urban district instructional policymaking by analyzing the ways in which normative and political pressures shaped district leaders' instructional policy decisions. Drawing on concepts from the politics of education, it shows how teachers and principals repeatedly nullified policies that aimed…