Many college athletes suffer career-ending injuries that leave them with expensive medical bills and lost scholarship opportunities. California's 2012 student athlete bill of rights mandated that the state's universities continue to care for college athletes by providing access to medical care and equivalent scholarships even if they were injured…

Many recent critical reforms in state school finance systems have been catalyzed by the courthouse, not the statehouse. Advocates for equity-focused school finance reforms often consider legal action as the best path to significant policy changes. This brief discusses state-level lawsuits on adequacy and equity grounds and their outcomes.

Over the last decade, many local education agencies (LEAs) across California imposed significant restrictions on community-based orientation and mobility (O&M) instruction. Administrators from these LEAs prohibited O&M Specialists from transporting students off-campus for instruction, with one large Southern California district going so…

There are at least 39 million Americans who have attended college but needed to stop out before earning a degree. The "Degree Reclamation Playbook" supports practitioners seeking to reengage this population, capture the momentum of existing credits, and bring students across the degree finish line. Drawing on more than a decade of work,…

California's Assembly Bill 705 has affected the way that English learners (ELs) access English and English as a second language (ESL) coursework, requiring that degree- or transfer-seeking students have the right to enroll in English or ESL courses, and community colleges are responsible for implementing initial placement practices and designing…

In this essay, Luis E. Poza argues that educational dignity can help practices and reforms targeting students classified as English learners move beyond a narrow focus on programmatic and material factors related to English language development and instead toward more holistic consideration of these students and their schooling ecologies. In…

Prior research suggests that hostile immigration policies can motivate undocumented immigrants' political engagement, but may also create unique risks that limit their willingness to participate. We examine how perceptions of the immigration policy context may help or hinder undocumented college students' political engagement. Using data from an…

The least restrictive environment (LRE) is the legal right for students with disabilities to be included and educated with their non-disabled peers. However, at a fundamental level, LRE can be misinterpreted and measured inconsistently, creating a contentious environment for some schools and families of students with special needs. In the current…

Scholarship on the intersection between immigration, legal status, and education has grown over the past decade. Given that schools are intended to be purveyors of democratic values, schools represent an ideal context to examine how immigration and legal status are considered in a community that aims to support the academic and social success of…

National reports have raised concerns about the physical accessibility of public school facilities for people with disabilities. These facilities serve important roles as schools, voting locations, and emergency shelters, among other things. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to examine the physical accessibility of public school…

This study reports on a randomized controlled pilot intervention study examining the effectiveness and feasibility of a low-intensity (i.e. three sessions), low-cost, parent advocacy intervention. The intervention study employed community-partnered research methods and targeted a low-income community of mostly Latinx, immigrant-origin parents of…

How do we ensure that all students have the tools and resources they need to succeed in today's educational context? In this article, we explore how the right to education generally and to specific educational tools and resources in California have been protected through litigation in the past; how the COVID-19 pandemic revealed technology-based…

Claiming that free speech is dying on American campuses, a conservative think tank has led an effort to push states to adopt a model bill that, in the name of defending campus free speech, risks undermining it. This report seeks to understand the context and content of the "campus free-speech" movement, to track its influence within…

The Forum Guide to Reporting Civil Rights Data presents a variety of effective methods through which local education agencies (LEAs) report civil rights data to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. In addition, the guide provides examples of how state education agencies can voluntarily help their LEAs with Civil Rights Data…

A new law, Assembly Bill 705 (Irwin), is driving dramatic changes to how the California Community Colleges place students into English and math courses. In fall 2019, AB 705 began requiring the colleges to use students' high school grades as the primary means of placement; restricting colleges from denying students access to transferable…