The policy landscape around curriculum selection and implementation is thorny: the federal government cannot mandate any state or local curricula, state policy varies widely, and local schools and districts often lack the capacity to support and sustain detailed reviews of materials and ongoing teacher training in quality curricula. Cultural and…

The issue of school safety is of paramount concern but what is lacking is clarity on the best course of action aimed at bolstering safety in public schools. We sought to answer the following research questions: What topics are addressed in school board policies related to arming employees? What outlying policy topics are addressed in school board…

We survey 137 charter school administrators and 129 board members and find that U.S. charter school internal controls are perceived to be relatively strong overall. However, board independence, board communication of internal control responsibilities to school personnel, lines of communication between the board and school personnel, and reporting…

Employing an institutional logics framework and critical discourse analysis, this study examines the discourse of participants in a stakeholder-feedback meeting about a proposal by the Denver Public School board to extend collective bargaining rights to teachers in the district's innovation schools. The findings provide insight into the logics…

In November of 2009 Mr. Sean Lyndon was elected to the Verde Mountain School Board and by February 2012 he resigned from this position. During his tumultuous tenure, Mr. Lyndon's antics proved divisive, caustic, and disruptive to the governance process. These actions included belittling and intimidating fellow school board members and school…

School districts use a variety of policies to close budget gaps and stave off teacher layoffs and furloughs. More schools are implementing four-day school weeks to reduce overhead and transportation costs. The four-day week requires substantial schedule changes as schools must increase the length of their school day to meet minimum instructional…

The Colorado Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act requires grade-level attainment in literacy in English for students in grades K-3. Its practical outcome, however, has been to pressure schools with bilingual programs to shift their instructional language allocations towards more English in the early grades. Proposed rule revisions debated…

Minority students and students with disabilities are disciplined disproportionately from their peers. Discipline has led to many negative consequences in the lives of youth in the United States, including the school-to-prison pipeline. In 2014, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance encouraging school districts to develop policies that…

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling, of March 2017, favored the plaintiff, Endrew F. in the "Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District" case. This decision strengthens the Rowley decision of 1982 and has raised the bar requiring an increased responsibility for Districts to provide programs to eligible students with disabilities the…

Although urban and suburban school superintendents serve the largest group of students in terms of sheer numbers of schoolchildren, there are actually more superintendents serving in rural school districts in the United States. I examined the expected roles or "hats" of the rural superintendent by collecting data from several districts…

Background: In 2002, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that schools adopt policies that reduce exposure of children to ultraviolet radiation to prevent skin cancer. We report here the development of a school sun-safety policy measure and baseline descriptive statistics from the assessment of written policies collected…

Does school choice enhance the ability of school districts to raise revenue? School districts use charter and magnet schools to attract and retain students, but does choice improve the odds for school districts seeking increased taxing authority at the polls? If those parents who choose schools are attentive to district policies, then increasing…

Of all the recent budget cuts made by the Eagle County, Colorado, school district, none sparked as much anger or faced the same scrutiny as the decision to cut three foreign-language teaching positions and replace them with online instruction. At a spring school board meeting, supporters of the targeted programs in French and German, as well as…

Charter schools have been studied from numerous perspectives. One topic that remains under-researched, however, is charter school leadership. Therefore, we examine how charter administrators define their leadership roles and their ability to lead. Results indicate that charter principals see three primary functions in their leadership--building…

In the final sprint to polish Race to the Top applications, hundreds of school districts shunned a shot at a share of $4 billion in grants by refusing to sign on to their states' plans for the federal competition. California officials had secured the signatures of 790 local education agencies (leas) late last week, including most of the state's…