Compared to all other options, homeschooling provides parents with the most control over their children's educational experiences. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in the U.S. homeschool population. Black families had the largest increase in home educators from 3.3% to 16.1% between April 2020 and October 2020. The emerging literature on Black…

In the U.S., state guidance to schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was politicized. We used state-level political affiliation to explore whether access to curricular resources differed pre-pandemic or during pandemic remote teaching and teachers' reported control over curricular resources during pandemic teaching. We found that…

Public school districts are facing twin challenges: maintaining a labor supply of qualified teachers while shoring up the deteriorating system that compensates them. Keeping public-school teachers' pensions plans flush is expensive, and it accounts for a growing share of education spending. In some states, public charter schools provide an…

When the nation shut down in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, states had to figure out what education would look like for the remainder of the academic year. These abrupt changes affected not only students' ability to learn but also their access to the support system that would help prepare them for steps beyond high school. This Policy…

In partnership with the National Charter School Resource Center (NCSRC), the National Association for Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) has been conducting authorizer assessments over the past six years. However, the correlation between high-quality authorization practices and charter school impact has largely been unexplored. This report uses a…

Using theories of representation and democratic education, this article examines the impetus of parent trigger policies in the United States and their potential effects on public good goals for public education. The article also uses theories of representation and responsible democratic governance to assess the parent trigger policies, or what are…

This study looks deeply inside 17 schools that stand at the vanguard of the current revolution in teaching. This new National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) report reveals the substantive ways in which these schools are providing their teachers with more time to reflect on, develop, and hone their craft, by very explicitly leveraging an…

What happens when teams from 57 cities building afterschool systems gather to discuss two key system responsibilities--improving afterschool programs and using data for informed decision-making? Lots of rich discussion. This report covers a national afterschool conference held in February 2013. It details what mayors, program providers, system…

All students, including students with disabilities, must be included in state accountability systems as required by law. In April 2007, federal regulations provided states the flexibility to offer another assessment option--an Alternate Assessment based on Modified Achievement Standards (AA-MAS) for some students with disabilities. The AA-MAS is…

"Citizenship" is a quality that most Americans would agree should be promoted in the schools. "Values education," as we have seen, provokes controversy and the question "Whose values are you going to teach?" An acceptable response is: "Values of citizenship, American democratic values, and the values upon which…

Under the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (P. L. 96-272), Congress outlined a case review system intended to assure that child welfare agencies deal directly with various aspects of child placement. The second of four volumes, this document presents case study descriptions of the hearings within the context of the case review…