While recent research provides insights into how district and school leaders responded to the extraordinary disruptions created by the COVID-19 pandemic, less is known about the role of influential state-level education leaders during the crisis. In this paper, we draw on interviews with state leaders to examine their efforts to support students'…

States diverge widely when it comes to education funding choices, leading to substantial differences in how much states spend on schooling, the role of local versus state revenue sources, and relative differences among districts in funding levels. Prior studies have documented that Democratic party control of state governments appears to be…

This research investigates whether teachers' unions influence student academic achievement in Southern states that prohibit collective bargaining. Our data are from the School and Staffing Survey and the Stanford Education Data Archive. We measure the strength of teachers' unions by union membership rate and meet-and-confer status of a district…

Performance-based funding (PBF) policies with research incentives have grown in popularity over the years despite little understanding regarding whether they actually work. This study leverages a novel national data set to examine the impact of PBF research incentives on the research expenditures and total state appropriations among public 4-year…

In this research article, Pamela R. Bennett and Amy Lutz offer new hypotheses about how state bans on affirmative action affect application decisions based on students' beneficiary positions vis-à-vis affirmative action and evaluate them for black, white, Latino, and Asian American students separately. They posit that bans discourage applications…

The U.S. elementary and secondary teaching force in recent decades has changed significantly and in important, sometimes surprising ways. It has become far larger, far less experienced, less diverse by gender, and more diverse by race/ethnicity. And it remains unstable. Yet researchers, policymakers, and the public appear not to have much marked…

Especially since 2010, conservative interests' dominance at advancing their preferred policies across U.S. states has been clear, with large and escalating impacts in education. Although adversaries on the political left remain in catch-up mode, there have been auspicious developments. This study focuses on one of these, seeking to understand a…

While the study of ignorance is nothing new to philosophy, this article explores the origin and production of ignorance in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors link the question of a pandemic of ignorance to state education laws and policies that arguably manufacture ignorance. Their purpose is not to create a sense of paranoia or lead…

The goal of talent management systems is to recruit, prepare, select, place, induct, develop, compensate, and retain educators with the desired competencies to achieve the organization's vision for instructional quality. Strong alignment of talent management policies and practices is essential to achieve that goal. The purpose of this workbook is…

Intradistrict open enrollment policies allow students to transfer to another school in their resident district. This datapoint captures district open enrollment requirements, reasons for denying student transfer, and exceptions to open enrollment policies. States with a "No" or "Not permitted" entry explicitly prohibit…

Interdistrict open enrollment policies allow students to transfer to a nonresident (receiving) district. This data point captures district open enrollment requirements, reasons for denying student transfer, and exceptions to open enrollment policies. States with a "No" or "Not permitted" entry explicitly prohibit interdistrict…

This study examined Latinx and undocumented students' tuition assignment and financial aid packages at public colleges and universities across the United States of America. Descriptive non-experimental research design was used to test nine sets of hypotheses to answer three research questions on: the relationship between college tuition assignment…

Salary differences between male and female superintendents start at the beginning of their careers and continue throughout employment (Biasi & Sarsons, 2022; Blau & Kahn, 2017). This practice draws attention to the lack of gender equity, as evidenced by the unequal distribution of power, wealth, and benefits between males and females…

Since the peak of the pandemic in 2020, enrollment in virtual schools has steadily increased, with virtual schools now accounting for approximately 1.4% of the nation's public school students. While the effects of the pandemic on student achievement and mental health have been extensively studied, research has yet to thoroughly examine the impact…

In this paper, the authors draw on evolutionary theories of change and qualitative data from 2019-2022, to explore the impact of the pandemic on K-12 virtual education in a state with a long history of virtual schooling by asking: "How has the ongoing COVID pandemic influenced virtual schooling in Oregon?" A virtual school in this study…