Pregnant and parenting teenagers in the United States face academic, social, and emotional hardships (Baney et al., 2022; Kinser & Masho, 2015; Masterson et al., 2021). Schools, programs, and policies can aid pregnant and parenting students by alleviating burdens or improving schooling outcomes (Brouwer et al., 2019; Modesto, 2018; Zief et…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how teachers who teach 6th, 7th, or 8th grade English language arts in a virtual charter school environment describe the gamification process to support student engagement in the classroom. The overarching research question was: How do teachers who teach 6th, 7th, or 8th grade…

The linking of school choice and charter schools to the legacy of Black alternative education and civil rights initiatives is a central discursive galvanizing and organizing tool for charter proponents, as it aims to provide legitimacy to the charter movement, while simultaneously coopting Black critiques of the institution of education to advance…

Using student-level data, we analyze the post-secondary enrollment of high school graduates across 29 states from an online charter provider from 2017 to 2020. We estimate the association between virtual charter student characteristics and the likelihood of college enrollment. We find that students who enroll multiple years in the virtual school…

Using six waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey and the National Teacher and Principal Survey that span two decades, our study explores the differences between urban charter and traditional public school teachers and how those differences become more or less pronounced over time. During this time frame, the charter sector experienced…

School social workers provide mental health services to millions of students each year. However, few studies focus on how social workers generate funding and other support for school mental health. The purpose of this study is to identify the continuum of school mental health supports and how social workers advocate for and generate these…

Teachers in the United States are experiencing challenges linked to the increasing number of immigrant students entering schools. Los Angeles County Charter schools are among the country's most diverse, with many immigrant students. Although first-generation and immigrant students' education barriers and teacher challenges are documented, little…

School choice is spreading across the U.S. at the same time that scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) are stagnant. We examine the association between education freedom and 8th grade student NAEP score levels and gains in states in 2019. We construct the 2019 Education Freedom Index as a composite measure of the…

Unified enrollment (UE) systems were designed to improve efficiency, equity, and transparency in school choice processes, but research has focused on efficiency gains. This study examines whether moving from decentralized enrollment processes to UE mitigates or exacerbates racial segregation that often occurs in choice systems. Specifically, we…

Teacher turnover, or those teachers who either move between schools or leave the profession entirely, is a growing problem in today's education system. Though education research is flush with studies about turnover's causes and the success of certain policy initiatives, little attention has been paid to the perspectives of those policymakers often…

Evidence-based practices in concussion management (CM) have been codified into legislation. However, legislation is varied, and implementation is narrowly evaluated. School nurses hold a unique position to assess the implementation of health policies. The implementation of concussion management policies across Massachusetts high schools was…

Numerous video games marketed entirely for entertainment purposes, also known as commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) titles, can serve as an effective tool for teaching students complicated skills such as executive functioning, hypothesis testing, and critical analysis. In this phenomenological case study, I outline a pedagogical approach that…

School discipline has been a site of contention and reform. In this study, we draw from 17 interviews with traditional and charter school principals in one mid-sized urban school district to examine how principals use discipline as a tool to both maintain control and demonstrate care. Our study calls attention to different strategies principals…

The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive study is to understand how teachers describe their experiences of safety, love/belonging, and esteem within PLCs (professional learning communities) in regard to teacher retention in a K-8 charter school in Nevada. It was unknown how K-8 charter school teachers describe their experience of safety,…

This article theorizes how crises and markets shape the responses of consumers and producer organizations. We advance four propositions: 1) if a crisis requires major revisions in operational rules, less-exit sensitive (i.e., monopoly-like) organizations shall revise to aggregate preferences of organized producers; and more-exit sensitive…