Background: In recent years, school districts have experienced a complex policy environment with myriad reforms aimed at addressing longstanding and historically entrenched disparities in opportunities and outcomes between racially minoritized students and White students. One such reform is standards-based accountability, with its emphasis on…

Background/Context: In the spring of 2015, about 135,000 New Jersey students--almost 20% of the test-eligible children--did not take the state's test. Opposition of this magnitude directly contradicted a central stipulation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), which required states to test 95% of their eligible students to…

This commentary reflects on what it means to have a mandatory policy for supporting trans students in education settings, drawing on the South Australian context. The authors argue that for policy to be productive, it needs to move beyond a document to being implemented in practice.

Background: Promise programs are a quickly spreading policy tool in the free college movement. Despite their rapid spread, promise programs remain generally untested and there is even less information about how they are implemented. Research Questions: (1) In what ways were The Degree Project's (TDP) theory of change and intents represented in…

Background/Context: Considered one of the most influential educators in Brazil's history, Anísio Teixeira is one of the renowned Latin American students who came to Teachers College (TC). Teixeira was a prominent reformer and educator known for advocating free, public, and secular education accessible to all children. His work as an educator and…

Background/Context: School leaders are central to state and district human-capital reforms (HCRs), yet they are rarely equipped with the skills to implement new evaluation, professional development, and personnel data systems. Although districts increasingly offer principals coaching and training, there has been limited empirical work on how these…

Background/Context: This article employs critical policy analysis as it examines the historical underpinnings of racialized policy discrimination in Detroit. It considers histories, discourses, and oppressive structures as it seeks to understand how policies have been and currently are implemented by Whites in predominantly Black urban areas.…

Background: Scholars widely acknowledge that politics help explain why policies are adopted and how they play out in states, districts, and schools. To date, political analyses of education reform tend to isolate a particular policy and examine the politics of its adoption or implementation, but pay less attention to the effects of the politics of…

Background/Context: Early childhood education joined the standards movement in 2002 with the Good Start, Grow Smart initiative (Brown, 2007), with advocates arguing that standards were a tool for creating more continuity and coherence in PreK systems (Bowman, 2006; Kagan 2012). Critics posed concerns about a perceived poor fit between…

Background/Context: Testing accommodations have been widely utilized as a way of increasing the validity of content assessments for English language learner (ELL) students. However, concerns have also arisen regarding the appropriateness of accommodation use, including the accessibility and fairness of accommodations. While many states have…

The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) expanded the federal role in American education, and by doing so altered the distribution of power among the federal government, states, and local districts. When the law was enacted, it was unclear how this change in the distribution of power would play itself out. This study examines the…

Background/Context: Peer Assistance and Review (PAR), or peer review as it has historically been called, has existed in a handful of school districts since the early 1980s. In 1999, California became the first state to pass PAR legislation; at that time, a major district had not implemented the policy in over a decade. Setting: This is an in-depth…

Background/Context: Studies of new teacher induction have typically examined the structural components of mentoring programs or documented the nature of support provided to beginning teachers. More recently, Susan Moore Johnson and her colleagues examined new teachers' induction experiences across multiple states and preparation routes. In…

This article discusses four reasons for advocacy activities related to early childhood education and child care: preserving existing programs; increasing capacity and quality of service; making early education more accessible, affordable, and equitable; and educating the public. (IAH)

Background/Context: In an era of high stakes accountability, public school districts struggle to improve teaching and learning for all students. As a result, effective professional development approaches for teachers are a high priority. Recently, teachers' learning communities (LCs) have been recommended because successful LCs foster teacher…