The Georgia Department of Education has clearly defined standards for learning about Africa in the seventh grade. However, there exists great variation in how textbooks present this material and address these standards. Using a qualitative content analysis approach, we assess the presentation of Africa in three widely used Georgia social studies…

In this article, the authors propose a department-level curricular committee structure, called Strand Committees, as a mechanism to facilitate oversight and enact significant change to policies and practices in specific courses. The primary goal of the Strand Committees is improving both student success and instruction while upholding a high…

We compare the institutional standards and expectations for English language arts (ELA) educators from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the leading professional organization in this field, and the state of Georgia. By conducting a critical policy analysis of documents from NCTE and the Georgia Department of Education (GADoE) we…

This article draws together Narrative Positioning Analysis and a Bourdieuian perspective to investigate the relationship between the position of the chair, their disposition towards reforms, and the impact on departmental learning. Our analysis indicates two major conclusions. First, there is a disconnect between chairs' leadership dispositions…

With the increasing use of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) nationally, several states have developed systems to recognize exemplar schools that are implementing PBIS with fidelity. These systems serve the dual purpose of identifying model PBIS schools for other schools to emulate while also reinforcing schools' effective PBIS…

Scholarship on service-learning demonstrates a variety of benefits to students, faculty, and the university. One clear benefit beyond these is the ability of service-learning to support and advance a university's civic mission within its community and region. This article offers an account of the use of service-learning in a collaborative project…

The Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) program, written into the Every Student Succeeds Act, gives up to seven state educational agencies the opportunity to launch innovative assessment pilots in their public schools, with the goal of eventual statewide implementation. As of August 2020, the U.S. Department of Education had…

This contribution takes a critical perspective on digital school performance platforms (SPP), which today play a key role in US state education monitoring and accountability. Using examples from two different US state education agencies, I provide an analytical disentanglement of some key dimensions of such platforms' enactment and materiality. I…

An abundant and longstanding body of scholarship has underscored the White femininity of the U.S. K-12 teaching workforce and the need to diversify its ranks. Black males, in particular, potentially struggle with the notion of becoming teachers given their often highly negative lived experiences with schools and schooling including low…

In 2015, the U.S. Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that included provisions to support gifted and talented learners. The U.S. Department of Education's Consolidated State Plan template only required states to directly address the inclusion of gifted education under Title II, Part A: Supporting Effective Instruction (Section…

National Writing Project (NWP) sites work within an established framework of summer institutes, teacher-led professional development, and continuity to cultivate teacher leaders and empower them by applying these principles. Invitational Summer Institutes traditionally serve as the gateway by which teachers become involved with NWP sites and start…

This article describes initial efforts to pilot an evaluation instrument for school counselors. The pilot was a collaboration led by the state's school counselor association involving a state department of education (DOE), local school districts, and university faculty members. The article begins with a brief overview of historical and contextual…

The collegiate foreign language profession has become increasingly aware of the unnecessarily detrimental effects of bifurcated curricula on student learning and departmental governance, yet there have been few instances to date of departments that have been able to achieve unified, articulated programs of study. This article presents one foreign…

This study sought to understand the opportunities and challenges associated with the implementation of state designed Race to the Top (RttT) funded reform networks. Drawing on a conceptual framework developed from the networked governance literature, we analyzed the 12 state RttT grantees' applications. Our analysis revealed that states designed…

Collaboration between K-12 and higher education sectors has not been as productive as participants and policy leaders would like--especially in an era of emphasis on college readiness and completion, which requires such collaboration. Various mechanisms have been used to foster collaboration including state P-20 (early learning through higher…