While the charter sector has much to celebrate, the country can do more to put great schools--including excellent charters--within reach for our most vulnerable students. Students with disabilities represent one such group. The best solutions start by partnering with the parent groups that advocate for students with disabilities, and have been…

Since Betsy DeVos became the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, she has continued to push for a federally funded private school voucher program. These programs currently exist in 29 states and provide state support--through direct payments or tax credits--for students to attend private schools. Some states have historically used…

In 2017 the Texas Education Agency (TEA) launched the Systems of Great Schools (SGS) initiative. With a combination of incentives and capacity building, SGS attempts to transform how school districts approach school improvement. It calls on districts to manage school performance in new ways, expand access to school choice options, and take a…

The purpose of this report is to summarize the status of state-defined alternate diplomas in the 50 U.S. states three years after the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESSA) indicated that states could develop these diplomas and use them in accountability calculations. To count this diploma in a graduation measure for accountability, several…

We leverage nationally representative data and statewide data from Washington to investigate trends in occupational career and technical education (CTE) participation for students with and without disabilities. Consistent with prior work, we document declines in occupational CTE participation since the early 2000s, and provide the first empirical…

The 2017 Supreme Court decision "Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District" highlighted the importance of monitoring students' progress toward appropriately challenging individualized educational program (IEP) annual goals and making changes to students' educational programs when needed. The process for setting an IEP goal should be…

Effective teachers can have a significant impact on student success; unfortunately, low-income students, students of color, English learners, and students with disabilities are more likely to be assigned to unqualified, less experienced, and less effective teachers. Inequitable access to effective educators is one contributing factor that…

In 2019, 46 states and territories are implementing Preschool Development Grants (PDGs), which will support states to do five broadly defined activities: 1. A Birth to Five Needs Assessment 2. A Birth to Five Strategic Plan 3. Maximizing Parent Knowledge and Choice 4. Sharing Best Practices 5. Improving Overall Quality. This brief starts by…

Since the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era many program improvement schools were prescribed Professional Learning Communities (PLC) professional development as a corrective action by their respective Local Education Agency (LEA). Despite the adoption and implementation of many corrective action measures (including PLCs) recommended by LEA's, the…

Immigration and education policies between state and federal levels often push students into a cyclical web of contradictions that replicate systemic injustices and leave many students in a conundrum of uncertainty to their access and continued eligibility to attend higher education. Drawing from Critical Race Theory (CRT), Latino Critical Theory…

The Chinese New Silk Road initiative offers unique opportunities for setting up Sino-European research collaborations. Academic cooperation between countries that are rooted in completely different legal, cultural, and academic backgrounds might however also create new challenges. This article investigates the impact of these differences in the…

This critical discourse analysis examines the construction of an "appropriate" education by Florida administrative law judges in their special education final orders over time. The results indicate that despite each child being different, the construction of an appropriate education was uniform within the given time periods. Prior to the…

This article argues that business and professional communication practitioners, instructors, and students, besides becoming better informed about the legal context of website accessibility, should also become more aware of the ethical considerations of creating digital communication products that are inherently accessible for people with…

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus began to develop a national system of education trying to balance the prioritization of Soviet legacy, strong state control, and processes of democratization. The system of education is a powerful translator of dominant ideologies and legitimate concepts, including the concepts of gender and…

In this chapter, we outline the challenges campuses face in addressing sexual violence and Title IX compliance. We argue that there are critical roles for student affairs professionals in Title IX work in developing effective campus sexual violence prevention and response strategies.