Systemic gaps across educational opportunities for students of color and students from economically marginalized communities continue to exist in educational contexts. As Gorski (2018) stated, public education is supposed to be the great equalizer. Yet, we can see that our meritocratic system is creating further divides between those who have…

Where teachers were once limited to traditional textbooks, informational texts, novels, and materials passed along by others, today the online marketplace is wide open, flush with copious materials that teachers might choose, often at little or no cost. But practically nothing is known about what these supplemental instructional materials actually…

The global COVID-19 pandemic is testing the responsiveness of school systems. Extensive discourse about disruptions to the standardized examinations students take in their final year of secondary school is symbolic of their high-stakes status worldwide. The interruptions provide an opportune moment to question the efficacy of exams as a…

This study explores to what extent principals perceive "instructional program coherence" (IPC) and vertical collaboration occur in high schools and their mid-level feeder schools. It also measures IPC and its five components' association with different measures of student achievement. The study took place in the state of Missouri, and…

The California Community Colleges (CCC) began implementation of AB 705 in fall 2018, ensuring that most students started in transfer-level math rather than a developmental education sequence. The RP Group's Multiple Measures Assessment Project (MMAP) has found that for all student groups, dramatically increasing access to transfer-level math…

This paper reports on a research study in which seven New York City high school mathematics teachers participated in a professional development opportunity around the teaching of mathematics for social justice. The teachers saw value in teaching math for social justice and were philosophically aligned with the pedagogy. Despite this and despite…

The South African Department of Education has attributed the poor pass rates in Grade 12 Physical Sciences to the learners' lack of practical work and the inability of learners to solve problems by integrating their knowledge from different topics in Physical Sciences. A possible reason for this could be a disjointed alignment between the…

This policy brief describes the Texas high school graduation requirements put into effect through the passage of House Bill 5 in 2013. The brief also contends the introduction of academic endorsements, similar to college majors and intended to help high school students develop subject-area knowledge, may create clearer paths to selective college…

Purpose: As concurrent enrollment (CE) programs continue to expand in the USA, a growing share of English teaching at the first-year university level is taking place in secondary schools. Though much of the discourse surrounding CE courses relates to quality control, the purpose of this paper is to argue for a reconsideration of the terms by which…

This study examined the content alignment between an English as a foreign language skills curriculum and a provincial language test in China. When there is misalignment in the content between the standards of a curriculum and a test, conclusions about student abilities and teaching effectiveness can be questioned. To examine this, three categories…

The school curriculum is often the formal document designed for teachers to treat topics that allow for the impartation of knowledge and the development of competencies that prepare students for further studies. Achieving this depends mainly on its content structure and sequencing. The aim of this study is two-fold: to find the extent of vertical…

With the introduction of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), curriculum and professional development have had to change rapidly to fit the new standards. To aid with those changes, the EQuIP rubric was released as a guide for NGSS alignment. This study aims to evaluate lesson plans developed through the Target Inquiry project to…

Students with aligned educational and occupational expectations have improved college and labor market outcomes. Despite extensive knowledge about the ways social background and school context contribute to educational expectations, less is known about the role of social intuitions in shaping expectational alignment. Drawing on data from the 2009…

Jobs for the Future (JFF) is developing this state policy framework to outline the steps states can take toward fully adopting each of the Big Blur's four key components and creating a more effective system for grades 11-14. The Big Blur argues for the need to erase the arbitrary boundaries between high school, college, and careers and create one…

While there is interest in pathways-aligned high school math reform among secondary education stakeholders, change in high school math depends a great deal on policies, practices, and norms at the higher education level. This report focuses on the role of higher education in influencing (encouraging or deterring) secondary education math reform.…