The purpose of Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) program in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (2015) is to protect the educational rights of students experiencing homelessness across the United States. Despite the coordinated efforts of State and Local Educational Agencies to carry out these mandates and ensure equitable…

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, college and career readiness became the central focus of education policy in the United States. Career academies (CAs) are a popular way to support students in their postsecondary transitions, but little causal evidence exists about whether this model of schooling is effective in promoting learning and…

The purpose of this study is to explore graduation disparities among students with disabilities in the southern region of the United States and assess the impact of IDEA policy implementation within these 11 states. The intent of this research is to establish whether there is a connection between special education policies and graduation rates for…

Whole-school reforms have received widespread attention, but a critical limitation of the current literature is the lack of evidence around whether these extensive and costly interventions improve students' long-term outcomes after they leave reform schools. Leveraging Tennessee's statewide turnaround reforms, we use difference-in-differences…

High school graduation rates have increased dramatically in the past two decades. Some skepticism has arisen, however, because of the confluence of the graduation rise and the starts of high-stakes accountability for graduation rates with "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). In this study we provide some of the first evidence about the role of…

The reconciliation bill House Republicans passed outlines several proposed changes to higher education financing, including a new risk-sharing formula that would have colleges pay back a portion of their students' unpaid student loan bills. The amount colleges must pay is based on borrowers' unpaid loan payments each year (missed payments or…

This Fact Sheet highlights English learner students in secondary schools who are career and technical education participants (received at least one CTE credit in that year) and concentrators (received three credits within a career cluster during high school).

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…

Existing analytic frameworks used to analyze and report on English learner (EL) students have important limitations that complicate the efforts of policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to fully understand this group's experiences and outcomes and respond accordingly. To address this issue, we argue that education agencies should report and…

The purpose of the McKinney-Vento Act is to ensure that students experiencing homelessness have access to the education and other services they need in order to meet state academic achievement standards, and ultimately, to graduate prepared for college and career. Most homeless educators work one-on-one with homeless children, youth, their parents…

This dissertation provides an overview of the literature examining the history of policies impacting the overrepresentation of African Americans in special education. For decades this topic has been examined and proven to be a clear problem, yet the problem still exists. Historical and current research has focused on the proven problem but there…

Section 487(a)(17) of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA), requires postsecondary schools participating in Title IV programs to annually report data, including data relevant to students' cost of attendance and financial aid and the schools' graduation rates, to the U.S. Department of Education's (Department) Integrated Postsecondary…

High school graduation rates have increased dramatically in the past two decades. Some skepticism has arisen, however, because of the confluence of the graduation rise and the starts of high-stakes accountability for graduation rates with "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). In this study we provide some of the first evidence about the role of…

The inclusion of students with disabilities in general education versus more restrictive settings has steadily increased since the 1990s. Yet little is known about inclusion's effectiveness for these students or their nondisabled peers. I examine the impacts of a district-wide inclusion policy, leveraging the staggered, school-level implementation…

The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (McKinney-Vento Act) provides students who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence with the right to the same free, appropriate, public education that other students receive. Each year, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) collects demographic and academic data on students eligible for…