The largest system of higher education in the nation, the California Community Colleges (CCC) has disappeared more than one million students in the past 15 years, a 35% decrease in its student body since 2008 despite California's population increase. This dramatic shrinking of the CCC system was not an accident. It was manufactured by a vast…

Context/Background: This article provides an introduction to the special issue. It includes an overview of a collection of articles from scholars across the globe who are committed to deepening an understanding of the experiences of trans students and gender-expansive education in schools. The special issue grew out of concerns about the need to…

Background: Despite claims made by teachers, teacher educators, and researchers, the dominant U.S. legal and political practice holds that teachers are not full professionals. Denying teachers' full professional status limits teachers' professional autonomy and leaves their work heavily controlled by external authorities. Are these external limits…

Background/Context: After decades of restrictive U.S. language policies geared toward English-only education, recent years have seen a proliferation of dual-language programs, Seal of Biliteracy awards, and bilingual education programming more broadly. The demand for such programming ostensibly suggests growing consensus around the benefits of…

This brief presents the most significant recommendations based on a review of key findings from research presented in this special issue. The authors offer what they believe to be the most important considerations of what works for improving Black male school achievement in the domains of research, practice, and policy.

Connecticut experienced two major changes in testing policy for children with disabilities that played a major role in conclusions about educational progress in the state. First, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 required that all students with disabilities participate in grade-level, standardized tests. This movement of students…

The narrative in this chapter runs as follows. As the political, social, and economic environments that surround the American high school undergo seismic shifts, they create new forms of secondary education. We report that the environmental conditions between 1890 and 1920 were such that most of the pillars that anchored the American high school…

This article outlines the imperative for strengths-based research to counter deficit perceptions and perspectives of Black males in contemporary discussions of their school achievement in the United States. The importance of young men of color in shaping research agendas, practice, and public policy is argued followed by a brief overview of the…

This chapter tells the story of how and why one student who received a ticket for being late to school joined the fight against policies that criminalize students in Los Angeles Unified School District.

This article summarizes major points about the transformation of educational assessment that emerged from the work of Gordon Commission and it presents recommendations to different stakeholders as to needed changes in policy, practice, and research and development.

Background: Educational reform responds to local and national pressures to improve educational outcomes, and reform efforts cycle as similar pressures recur. Currently, reform efforts focus on teachers, even though confidence in a host of American social institutions is dropping. One of the most widespread reforms regarding teachers is the…

The articles in this special issue examine the increasingly complex relationship between segregation, desegregation, and integration in a sociopolitical environment vastly different from that of the initial days of desegregation. These issues are examined from historical and political perspectives, contextualizing the complexities of segregation,…

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was designed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to evaluate the quality, equity, and efficiency of school systems around the world. Specifically, the PISA has assessed 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy on a 3-year cycle, since…

Background/Context: The issue of how to achieve a racially diverse student population has become increasingly challenging since a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court split decision endorsed the importance of creating diverse schools, while simultaneously limiting the assignment to public schools based on an individual student's race or ethnicity. The article…

In this article, teacher action research is positioned as a bridge connecting research, practice, and policy--as an important and practical way to engage teachers as consumers of research, as researchers of their own practice, as designers of their own professional development, and as informants to scholars and policy-makers regarding critical…