Recent Florida legislation (SPB 7044) should be viewed with much concern and with skepticism as to the intent of the bill and its unintended consequences. The bill requires state colleges and universities to seek reaffirmation from different accrediting organizations at the end of each review cycle. The Council for Higher Education Accreditation…

Schools can be permanently closed for many reasons -- economic rationalisation, post-disaster relocations, population decline or educational failure. Research on permanent school closures reports mostly negative and long-lasting consequences, not just for the school's staff and students, but for the local community. After the 2010/2011 Canterbury…

School district takeovers--when a state education agency (SEA) assumes control of a low-performing district--are the most aggressive accountability intervention available to SEAs. Much of the scholarship on takeovers has been skeptical on both normative and pragmatic grounds, but these analyses don't wrestle with what else to do when students'…

This policy analysis examined the intersection of a statistical model and locus of control to recommend an accountability model that best upholds the criteria of equity, efficacy, and impact on student learning for Missouri schools. Using Eugene Bardach's eightfold path and informed by the quality education in schools framework, this analysis…

This paper examines the financial transparency and accountability practices before and after the 2023 state takeover of the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Superintendent Mike Miles and his Board of Managers reallocated critical district resources towards troubling new "priorities," while the district was facing a sizable…

Lone Star Governance (LSG), a governance model rooted in school board best practices, was developed for Texas school board trustees and their superintendent to improve student outcomes (Crabill, 2017). This phenomenological study investigated school board members' perceptions compared to the perceptions of superintendents regarding the LSG…

State takeovers of struggling school systems represent some of the most contentious policy decisions in education. The transfer of decision-making power from a locally elected school board to the state is often undertaken with the goal of dramatically improving student academic achievement in districts that have been persistently low performing…

The purpose of this quantitative research was to understand resilience in alumni of SRSSs for gifted students through an analysis of relationships between adolescent ecological influences and resilience scores later in life. Resilience is an important skill for career advancement (Beltran, 2022), which was the reason many of these schools were…

This case study uses the approach by the Texas government to attempt a state takeover of Houston Independent School District (HISD) to examine the impact of framing on awareness and acceptance of executive action. This work extends recent studies in Georgia and Massachusetts that find stakeholder relationships, the role of Republican governors,…

Child-care researchers agree on the importance of preschool quality as an essential factor in developmental and cognitive outcomes. This study is a first attempt to assess structural and process aspects of Greek private and state preschool settings after the COVID-19 crisis and to provide empirical evidence for efforts to maintain the early…

Objective: Understanding how children cope is an important factor in investigating the impact of adversity on child development. With children increasingly experiencing adverse situations -- such as the COVID-19 pandemic -- having methods of assessing coping strategies is an essential step in supporting self-regulation development. Parent report…

Independent school district central office administrators were challenged with defining, detailing and disseminating systems of support and structure during the unprecedented times of the COVID-19 pandemic. To maintain focus on instruction during a pandemic that caused needed attention on quarantined environments and remote learning structures,…

School leadership ranks among the most influential factors in student learning. Yet, principals contend with complex challenges every day, including teacher shortages, student well-being and safety concerns, resource constraints, and much more. It's no surprise they are reporting unprecedented levels of job-related stress. To position principals…

In Spring 2022, the campaigning group Reclaiming Education organised two webinars to explore the impact of academisation and consider alternatives, principally a return to local authority oversight or the establishment of local education boards. Speakers at the second event included Nigel Gann, Georgia Gould, Anntoinette Bramble and John McDonnell…

The decisions states make regarding what their assessments look like and what kind of information they produce inevitably shape instruction. Since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 ushered in an era of testing-based accountability for schools, state assessments have been governed by a set of design decisions that emphasize easily generated,…