The first Trump administration opposed race-conscious federal educational policies to redress state-sponsored discrimination and related racial inequality. Drawing on extensive qualitative data, we analyzed the mechanisms, collaborations, and strategies used to resist Trump’s first-term civil rights rollbacks for students. Resistance included (a) civil rights oversight and guidance from nongovernment groups, (b) unified messaging to counter attacks on public education, (c) congressional oversight of the Department of Education as well as preservation of its civil rights funding, and (d) litigation on procedural and novel grounds. This study probes how elected officials, intermediary organizations, and civil rights lawyers developed effective strategies and how they might persist today given revitalized federal efforts to abolish race-conscious education policies and constrain students’ civil rights.
Early education programs are increasingly under the purview of public school districts. This study analyzes a nationally distributed survey of superintendents ( N = 404) from the National Longitudinal Superintendent Database to examine (a) superintendent beliefs about the importance of Pre-K, (b) district prioritization of Pre-K, (c) how districts structure Pre-K leadership, and (d) practices supporting Pre-K and early education. Findings show that superintendents have limited direct experience or formal training in early childhood education, strongly value Pre-K for promoting kindergarten readiness, generally support Pre-K but with varying prioritization, and often embed Pre-K leadership within broader administrative roles. These findings point to directions for future research and highlight policy and practice changes to strengthen superintendent leadership for early education in districts.
Schools are central settings for youth mental health support, yet less research has examined policy environments shaping what is possible in school-based mental health systems. This study examines the zone of mediation for equity-minded school mental health policy change in one urban district, centering perspectives of six community-based mental health providers occupying peripheral positions between school and community organizations. Findings reveal that intersecting technical, normative, and political factors—including workforce shortages, deficit-based beliefs among potential providers, and the overburdening of schools as the primary site for addressing community-level need—produce systemic conditions that constrain the potential for equity-minded change. These findings carry implications for principal preparation, intervention design, and health, education, and social policy.
School choice can theoretically improve student outcomes with cost efficiency through competition. But empirical research on school spending is inconclusive, and little rigorous work confirms the conceptual link between privatization and increased competition in K–12 education with enthusiasm for public goods and the tax policies they require. We thus investigate Indiana, where in 2011 state policymakers implemented a private school voucher program and expanded the number of charter school authorizers. Analyzing unique information on public school finance, operational inputs, student achievement, and voter tax preferences with a difference-in-differences approach, we find that districts highly exposed to choice decreased expenditures and could not commensurately counteract shrinking revenues through local property tax referenda. Furthermore, short-term achievement gains reversed and became substantially negative over time.
Campus speech conflicts have intensified scrutiny of university decisions about whom to publicly elevate and platform. We examine commencement speaker selection as an organizational practice shaped by institutional characteristics and political environments rather than as a simple expression of institutional ideology. To address this gap, we analyze the political orientations of 1,875 commencement speakers at 52 universities between 1989 and 2024. Findings indicate a rise in liberal speakers, particularly since 2011, and a higher prevalence of conservative speakers at public institutions and universities with curricular emphases on occupational and professional fields. External environments of universities, including partisan control of state governments, citizen ideology, and disinvitation efforts from both the political left and right, also shape speaker selection.
This study examines a broad array of potential indicators for early warning and college readiness indicator systems (e.g., indicators made from English proficiency tests, grades, attendance, discipline records, and standardized test scores) for different groups of English learners in high school. Using data from 2008 through 2021 from the Chicago Public Schools, the study follows cohorts of students from eighth grade through college graduation, running exploratory analyses through logistic regression analyses and confirmatory analyses with omitted cohorts and machine learning methods. The study identifies ways of modifying indicator systems to better serve particular groups of English learners and to focus practices so that students are more likely to graduate high school and earn college degrees.
This study examined the implementation and impact of literacy coaching under Michigan's Read by Grade Three law. Drawing on 1,330 coaching logs, 318 hours of classroom video, and 900 minutes of interviews, we investigated (a) whether coaching improved K–3 teachers’ use of research-aligned literacy practices relative to a waitlist control group; (b) how coaches described the processes, content, and structure of their work; and (c) the opportunities and constraints they faced while implementing coaching within a statewide policy. Findings indicate that coaching supported teachers’ instructional improvement and that high fidelity to research-aligned practices was achievable at scale, although shaped by local conditions—highlighting the need for policies that attend to context to maximize the impact of large-scale coaching initiatives.
As suburbs racially change, they are increasingly a place where Latino students learn and Latino teachers teach. Latino-majority suburbs provide a strategic case to better understand how Latino and white educators make sense of race and place in the suburbs both when deciding where to teach and when engaging with Latino students and families. Drawing on interviews with 40 educators in a Latino-majority suburban school district in Texas, I demonstrate that narratives of choosing the district and narratives of Latino students and families varied by educator race and connection to place. Latino and white educators drew on their lived experiences as students, residents, and educators in the region to motivate their choice of district and inform distinct classroom practices.
School rezoning often generates concerns that drive resistance to boundary changes, but how this resistance translates into voting outcomes is less understood. This study introduces a three-part concerns framework for interpreting how families publicly articulate rezoning opposition. We examined concerns as responses to disrupted expectations, as discursive constructions, and as voting processes. Thematic analysis of more than 6,000 survey comments revealed that concerns about neighborhood dynamics, transportation, and school feeder patterns dominated responses, functioning as political tools that obscured underlying demographic anxieties. Although families avoided explicit mention of race or class, analysis of voting patterns showed systematic opposition to proposals increasing school diversity. These findings demonstrate that concerns are complex political constructions, offering school leaders practical insights for navigating opposition.
This study uses a randomized controlled trial designed to examine a university-led high-impact tutoring program at seven high schools. The treatment group (n = 525) participated in high-impact tutoring (i.e., groups of 2:1 or 3:1) while the control group (n = 438) attended a remedial mathematics course. The treatment group showed a difference of nearly a half-year of learning (0.13 SD) compared with the control group. We also found no evidence that 2:1 student-tutor groups were more effective than 3:1 groups. Although the university-led program produced strong effects, it was delivered at a high cost. Future work is needed to investigate strategies for reducing the cost of high-impact tutoring while maintaining effectiveness.
Paraeducators are among the largest categories of public education employees and are increasingly seen as a pool of potential teachers. However, little is known about paraeducator-to-teacher transitions. Using statewide administrative data, we show that while paraeducators may be more racially/ethnically diverse than the teacher workforce, Black and Hispanic paraeducators are less likely than White paraeducators to transition into teaching. We additionally show that teachers with paraeducator experience are similarly effective to teachers without paraeducator experience. Lastly, we use simulations to show that the potential for the paraeducator-to-teacher pipeline to diversify the teaching profession may be limited unless they are highly targeted. Our results have policy design implications for efforts to expand the paraeducator-to-teacher pipeline or to diversify the teacher workforce.
Community colleges serve a key role in increasing college access, yet their completion rates lag far behind 4-year universities, and policies such as tuition discounts and promise programs come up short in buoying the success of low-income students. We examined the efficacy of a supplemental program developed to strengthen advising and financial supports provided to full- and part-time community college students facing greater barriers to college completion. Using a mixed-methods approach with administrative and interview data, we found strong associations between supplemental program participation and students’ credits earned, college persistence, academic performance, full-time status, wages, and college transfer and completion. Our qualitative analysis illuminates mechanisms by which the supplemental program aids students in balancing external obligations and advancing toward completion.
Dominant forms of citizenship education remain tied to anti-Black charactereducation that reinforces the hegemony of racial liberalism and whitesupremacy. Drawing on the concept of racial literacy, this conceptual papercritiques existing conceptualizations of civic education and constructsa framework for an anti-oppressive citizenship education grounded inBlack feminism. Using Black feminist scholarship, this paper explores threepillars of a Black feminist citizenship framework: solidarity, humanizingresistance, and action toward liberation. This framework offers K-12 teachersthe opportunity to move away from citizenship education programs that ema-nate from and perpetuate anti-Blackness and instead allows for citizenshipeducation to be reimagined ideologically and in praxis using a Black feministepistemology to take civic education to horizons yet unseen.
Predominately White institutions of higher education are academic environments deeply entrenched in White cultural ideologies. Understanding how Black college students cope with this reality and the role that college campuses play in promoting inclusive and equitable environments is imperative. Using White institutional space as a theoretical framework, we explored how Black students enrolled in a predominantly White institution construct meaning of, cope with, and resist their everyday experiences. The student's normative encounters with Whiteness made them feel invisible and excluded. They responded to and countered the culture of Whiteness on their campus through strategies that resisted and reproduced racism. Findings highlight the need for campus administrators to understand the critical role of dismantling Whiteness when addressing the racial climate of their institution.
Employing an innovative arts-based approach to professional learning, this study examined in-service teachers’ reflective processes, insights, and pedagogic practices through the use of creative thinking journals. Using photovoice methodology, we conducted a thematic analysis of teachers’ journals and individual semi-structured interviews, focusing on how creative thinking journals enhanced reflective practices and teaching efficacy. Our findings demonstrate that creative journaling significantly deepened self-reflection, fostered a collaborative community among teachers, and supported the adoption of innovative teaching strategies. The integration of arts-based methods transformed classroom practices, promoting a more dynamic and responsive educational environment and offering valuable insights into effective professional learning strategies.
Across the United States, anti-equity politics are shaping education policies and decision making. While this anti-equity movement is well documented, less is known about strategies to defend against those challenges. We examined such strategies within a highly politicized area of education: multilingual learner (ML) policy and practice. Using critical policy analysis, we analyzed interview and meeting observation data collected over 5 years in a national research-practice partnership to examine 26 state education agency leaders' ML-focused work amid pervasive anti-equity politics. Findings revealed how state leaders used collaboration, research, and federal civil rights law as tools to protect ML education. Implications highlight the value of research-practice partnerships as spaces for sensemaking and evidence-based capacity building amid complex politics.
This study explored the significance of, and possibilities for, graduate education in protracted refugee situations. It focused on Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camps, where just 2% of students have access to higher education of any kind. Drawing on theorization of migrant temporalities and coloniality in education in emergencies, we considered the implications of graduate schooling for individual aspirations and the politics of knowledge production. We argue that, for alumni, Dadaab’s first camp-based master’s program fostered personal development, opened new pathways for physical and cognitive mobility, and fomented refugee-led scholarship and activism. Still, while refugees’ outcomes were framed as collectivized efforts to catalyze social change, they remained deeply gendered and constrained by bordering regimes, funding frameworks, and Western onto-epistemologies.
This study investigated the relationship between school attendance zone boundary (AZB) changes and racial segregation in Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland, a diversifying, majority-Black suburban district outside Washington, DC. We found that the district's frequent and widespread elementary AZB changes since 1990 were largely segregative, especially as its court-ordered desegregation plan ended. Our findings reflect a district in which contemporary rezoning processes were largely race evasive, as they are in many other places, although trends there may be shaped by the particular politics of race and class of this majority-Black setting. Our findings add to a growing literature on how suburban districts respond to diversifying student populations, and they can help inform efforts for more integrative and equitable AZBs.
School organizational decisions on resources and priorities shape the provision and distribution of learning opportunities, potentially creating conflicts between efficiency and equity. We evaluated this organizational efficiency-equity tradeoff hypothesis with statewide administrative data on elementary school students from one western state. We used value-added models of student achievement to generate annual estimates of schools' (a) overall effectiveness in promoting learning and (b) differential effectiveness in promoting more learning for low-income students relative to higher-income peers, and we explored the relationship between them. We found meaningful variability in differential effectiveness and a clear negative association between overall and differential effectiveness, but one that is sensitive to context. This implies that efficiency-equity tradeoffs are a common but not inevitable feature of school practice as educators balance diverse organizational goals.
Using a robust moderated mediation approach with a socioeconomically diverse sample of 1,532 adolescents(Mage = 14.61 years; 51% female; 68% White, 28% Black; 48% economically disadvantaged), this study tested whether growth mindset and behavioral engagement mediated the link between classroom quality and math and science achievement and whether effects varied by race or socioeconomic status. Student engagement, but not mindset, significantly mediated the association in both subjects. Mediation effects varied by race in math, with weaker effects for Black students, but did not differ by socioeconomic status. Findings underscore engagement, rather than mindset, as the primary mechanism linking classroom quality to academic achievement, highlighting the need for subject-specific and equity-focused strategies to support all learners.
