Automatic admissions policies (AAPs, "percent plans") redistribute college-going opportunities across segregated high schools to diversify college enrollments, increasing opportunities at predominantly minority high schools. If students "game" AAPs by attending schools with increased opportunities, AAPs could alter racial…

Building upon research utilizing Martin's Mathematical Socialization and Identity Framework, we examine factors related to community and family involvement to advance the current discourse that informs policies. Data from the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS:09) public-use file provided a sample of 1,029 Black girls for our analyses. We…

Taking advanced courses in high school predicts a broad array of positive postsecondary and labor market outcomes. Yet students from historically disadvantaged groups and low-income backgrounds have long been underrepresented in these courses. To address this problem, more than 60 districts in Washington state implemented a policy that…

The purpose of this study is to determine if teachers perceive evaluation as providing the motivation and feedback to change classroom practices in a context where teacher evaluation carries varied stakes for tenured versus untenured teachers. This mixed methods case study of four high schools in a single district in North Carolina uses survey and…

Most states claim academic rigor and career readiness as goals for all their students. But as school systems continue tracking students into higher or lower levels of academic coursework and into career and technical courses that lack rigorous, real-world assignments, they reflect an apparent underlying belief that their students' abilities are…

Dual credit programs rely heavily on state-level legislation and other regulations from educational agencies. As dual credit has evolved from the Project Advance program developed by Syracuse University and its partner school districts, policymakers have used their position to craft policies to direct dual credit practitioners to craft programs…

In response to widening achievement gaps and increased demand for post-secondary education, local and federal governments across the US have enacted policies that have boosted high school graduation rates without an equivalent rise in student achievement, suggesting a decline in academic standards. To the extent that academic standards can shape…

While existing literature documents disparities in and implications of absenteeism and truant behavior, less is known about truancy as defined in state laws. Habitual truancy, which can trigger external punitive responses, is particularly underexplored. The current study utilizes administrative data from the universe of Pennsylvania schools to…

Rural schools are unique in the challenges they face; therefore, it follows that the policies to address the challenges should also be unique and not adhere to the "one size fits all" mentality. This research uses a qualitative approach and takes the bold step to seek the input of teachers who work in rural schools for suggestions on how…

We use estimates across all known "credibly causal" studies to examine the distributions of the causal effects of public K12 school spending on test scores and educational attainment in the United States. Under reasonable assumptions, for each of the 31 included studies, we compute the same parameter estimate. Method of moments estimates…

Classroom music teachers in England design their own music curricula for Key Stage 3 (11 - 14 year olds, 6th - 8th Grades). These curricula are designed in a context where policymakers define, regulate and legitimate curriculum formulations. This study traced curriculum development in England, where government has validated a policy driven…

While we know that professionalization improves outcomes for teachers, education policy has effectively "deprofessionalized" teachers, especially those who serve immigrant English Learners. Based on a three-year case study, this paper explores how teachers in an immigrant-serving school exercised autonomy and authority over their…

BACKGROUND: Affirming spaces have been associated with improved mental health outcomes for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) adolescents. METHODS: With data from adolescents currently enrolled in middle or high school across the United States, this study used topic modeling methods to examine students' reports of…

There is debate over whether Asian American students are admitted to selective colleges and universities at lower rates than white students with similar academic qualifications. However, there have been few empirical investigations of this issue, in large part due to a dearth of data. Here we present the results from analyzing 685,709 applications…

Drawing upon Weick's (1995) theory of sensemaking, this qualitative study described how high school social studies teachers make meaning of culturally responsive sustaining education (CR-SE) as outlined in New York State's (NYS) CR-SE framework. This study also examined how that sensemaking is reflected in social studies teachers' curricular and…