This dissertation traces the way hair is framed in judicial texts about dress code policy in the U.S. between 1969 and 2023. Using 46 court cases from district, appellate, state supreme, and federal supreme courts, the study first considers how dress code is brought to courts over these 54 years, and the kinds of legal claims made in these cases.…

Institutions of higher education (IHEs) have been federally mandated to prevent and respond to reports of sexual violence on campus via Title IX for over 30 years as the trauma that results from campus sexual assault is considered prohibitive to accessing education. Yet, students may not be the only parties harmed when sexual violence is…

Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 has been increasingly utilized as a legal avenue by U.S. students with disabilities, particularly concerning remedies not typically awarded under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The purpose of this legal update is to briefly highlight recent case law in which guardians filed action in…

Using critical race theory (CRT) as both our theory and analytical framework, we interrogated vocational, career, and technical education (VCTE) policy as a racial instrument. We applied key CRT themes to examine both primary sources; including historical and contemporary VCTE Acts (e.g., Perkins I-V) and Congressional reports; and secondary…

America's schools are more segregated today than they were three decades ago. After initial progress in the wake of the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education"--further bolstered by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as by several other rulings by the court--the nation's schools began a process of resegregation in…

This study examined the learning trajectory of five US humanities teachers when navigating learning to teach the difficult history of school desegregation within a context of a six-month inquiry-based professional development. The research questions were: What do teachers frame as problems when teaching difficult histories? How do they…

Title I accountability requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) represent the present-day instantiation of Lau, which requires schools to provide a program for English learners (ELs) that supports their meaningful engagement and to provide transparent information about EL program quality. This study uses critical policy analysis to…

When unified status was granted to numerous school districts, school boards developed redistricting plans to implement neighborhood schools. Social justice advocates decried these plans as they reversed over 40 years of progress, as many of these efforts resulted in resegregating schools homogenously grouped by race and wealth. Using piecewise and…

Higher education diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have become an imperative for institutional change in an ever-changing pluralistic society. The impact of diversity on college campuses has come a long way since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Chang, 2005), but there is still needed work. Higher education institutions continue to…

Background: Equal employment opportunity guidelines and concepts are important for increasing equity in the workplace. Given the large number of undergraduate students currently in or entering the workforce, it is critical to convey these concepts in a manner that increases student understanding of appropriate organizational behavior. Objective:…

This essay describes Open Admissions in the South during postsecondary desegregation, providing a comparative analysis of policies and debates in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Georgia. Statewide Open Admissions policies emerged in the 1960s as part of superficial efforts to comply with desegregation but were ineffective; consequently, they were…

Heteronormativity, gender bias, and whitewashed notions of education threaten queer identities in K-12 educational spaces, specifically queer women educators of color seeking leadership roles within the public school system. The understanding of race, gender, and sexuality in K-12 education spaces are each worthwhile as focal points of educational…

To commemorate our continued growth in areas of equity, culminating towards our current mission statement, "Equitable, Responsive Education for All," the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP Center) would like to present this inaugural classic edition of "Equity Dispatch." Debuted in January 2012 by the Great Lakes…

Drawing upon the growing datafication of contemporary schooling, our purpose in this article is to use topological thinking as an analytical device to better understand the professionals and practices within emergent data infrastructures. We address this by attending to an influential national (and subnational) data infrastructure of school…

The 50th anniversary of the Marland Report provides an opportunity to reflect on its impact on the field of gifted education. A critical question is how the Marland Report addressed the need for equity, especially since the Marland federal definition made no explicit mention of culturally, linguistically, or economically different gifted students.…