State educational agency content coordinators commonly experience tensions in their professional roles related to distinct sets of beliefs, or logics, about who "should" control what students learn: the state bureaucracy, the local community, or the broader profession. Using an institutional logics frame and drawing on interviews with…

The mental wellness of university students can be critical for their success. In an attempt to minimize stress for students, many universities have implemented a policy for a fall break with limited evidence to support its intended outcomes. This case study offers a critical appraisal of the formation of the fall break policy at one medium sized…

The Every Student Succeeds Act's evidence requirements mandate the use of research in the selection of school improvement interventions, with the aim of ensuring that schools and districts invest their efforts and funding more wisely. This study of eight states presents three different approaches to the evidence requirements: using lists of…

This study examined the prevalence of student-to-student and staff-to-student sexual harassment in K-12 schools and school district compliance with Title IX using a retrospective survey of young adults. Participants (n = 511) were asked to describe their knowledge of policies and procedures regarding Title IX, the prevalence of sexual harassment,…

Florida Senate Bill 1720 drastically changed developmental education, beginning in fall 2014. This paper considers affected faculty members' perceptions and experiences with the passage and implementation of reform, according to focus group data provided by 294 participants at 21 Florida College System institutions between 2014 and 2019. We found…

Collaborative problem-solving research approaches have the potential to support improvement in educational policy and practice beyond instruction, by facilitating the development of a shared understanding of complex problems and creating social structures where district, community, and research partners can work together to solve them. This study…

The Race to the Top (RTTT) program incentivized states to use innovation for systemwide improvement of student outcomes, but little is known about how RTTT-funded innovation was sustained after the RTTT program ended. This mixed-methods study examined state and district approaches to sustaining an international innovation called "lesson…

The article advances an emergent framework for conceptualizing the relationship between principal leadership and education policy implementation. Based on a qualitative study of school principals and policy implementation in Region X of the Philippines, findings suggested that the way in which policies were interpreted and implemented at the…

This study explores the prevalence and implementation of four key school counseling policies at the state level and to what extent they are monitored for positive impact on the school counseling profession. Drawing on an analysis of state school counseling policy documents and interviews with school counseling leaders from 30 state education…

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.…

This article analyzes the messages and strategies of a sample of education interest groups, and assesses their interpretations of the political context to understand how the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) lost both political and public support during the crucial period of 2013-2014. Based on interviews with representatives of 19 interest…

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a scientifically validated framework that has been included in policy like the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 and the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. However, studies have pointed out the variability in definitions and implementation surrounding UDL. In order to clarify this conversation,…

This article employs event history analysis to explore the factors that were associated with the rapid uptake of teacher evaluation reform. We investigate three hypotheses for this rapid adoption: (a) downward diffusion from the federal government through Race to the Top (RTTT), (b) upward diffusion from large school district policies, and (c) the…

School turnaround--the rapid improvement of student achievement in low-performing schools--is increasingly a major topic of interest in K-12 public education. Federal legislation has left varying degrees of school improvement-related responsibilities up to states, and policy makers have divergent views about how to realize turnaround. We…