Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in education, yet pregnant and parenting students (PPS) continue to face barriers in U.S. higher education. This study examines how 4-year public institutions enact Title IX to support the academic progress of PPS using data from 518 campuses. Guided by institutional theory, compliance is conceptualized as patterned organizational practice rather than policy presence alone. Descriptive analyses show that most institutions post Title IX nondiscrimination and accommodation policies, whereas far fewer provide coordinated supports such as childcare or PPS support programs. Latent class analysis identifies four compliance orientations: Wrap-around , Info-resources , Letter-of-the-law , and Underperforming . Enrollment size, Carnegie classification, and U.S. region are associated with class membership. Only 30% of institutions exceed minimal support, highlighting the need for stronger accountability.
Community-based educational spaces have engaged in youth organizing as a tool to reshape education, juvenile justice, and city landscapes across the United States for racial and social justice. Such organizing not only has transformed policy and practice but also has impacted how young people involved in youth organizing engage their civic worlds around them. Through 5 years of fieldwork and 43 interviews conducted with 22 Black male youth in Los Angeles, California, the author advances a theoretical framework called Black transformative agency , a multiaxis process for the ways in which Black boys and young men learn to combat institutional hegemony and social isolation through individual means of navigation, relationship building, and collective means of organizing for social change. The author offers discussion and insight into how scholars and practitioners can engage politically activated youth by centering young people’s actions.
This paper examines how parents of students with disabilities from different social classes, racial backgrounds, geographic locations, and developmental stages construct school choice sets. Using an intersectional approach, we integrate ethnographic interviews and descriptive Geographic Information Systems to examine factors parents consider and how their perceptions are influenced by social background, geographic location, and their child’s developmental stage. We identify three profiles: (a) working-class parents transitioning children into kindergarten, (b) working-class high school parents of students with disabilities requiring specialized support, and (c) middle-class parents seeking high-achieving schools. These profiles demonstrate how disability, race, class, and geographic location interact to shape parents’ rationalizations for considering some schools over others, revealing multiple degrees of privilege and disadvantage that shape parents’ construction of choice sets.
When education draws on student and community funds of knowledge to enhance collective wellbeing, young people experience learning that matters , applying knowledge and skills to contribute to social good. This case examines the implementation of Akomanga Kaihanga at Tāmaki College (years 9–13) in New Zealand, the focus of a long-term research–practice partnership. Students collaborated with community partners to co-design actions addressing issues such as food insecurity, road safety and youth wellbeing. Findings highlight the importance of (a) a strengths-based view of students, (b) co-design responsive to local contexts and (c) systems supports. Early evidence shows that students gained confidence, collaboration and communication skills and achieved tangible impacts. Implications for sustainability and future research are discussed.
Despite extensive research on school leadership pipelines, less is known about how educators’ full career trajectories shape entry into the principalship. Using longitudinal administrative data from Texas spanning nearly three decades, this study follows more than one million educators and estimates discrete-time hazard models to examine transitions into school leadership. Results indicate that educators who become principals tend to follow relatively direct pathways into leadership roles. Subject-area specialization also shapes these pathways: Educators in English language arts; social studies; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; and elementary education are more likely to become principals than those in fields such as special education and the arts, highlighting how the principal pipeline operates as a career mobility sorting system shaping the composition of school leadership.
