This paper presents results from a survey of parents of school age children in Louisiana to understand their knowledge of and attitudes toward sex education. Louisiana adolescents rank amongst the highest in the nation for teen births and sexually transmitted infections. Louisiana does not require instruction in sex education at any grade level.…

More than a decade ago, the K-12 Framework for Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) shifted states' notions of what constitutes the core of science skills and knowledge that students need to thrive in school and beyond. The majority of states adopted standards based on the framework as well as the NGSS. Yet because of the…

High-quality K-12 instructional materials can meaningfully improve teaching practice and student achievement, especially when paired with professional learning support. Yet state policymakers have usually left ultimate authority for textbook selection to school district leaders. Consequently, the quality of materials across U.S. classrooms and…

In this brief, we examine an important but obscure form of state spending on K-12 education-state subsidies of school district pension costs. In 2018, this exceeded $19 billion across 23 states. To put that amount into perspective, 2018 federal spending on Title I programs was $15.8 billion. This revenue stream is often ignored in analyses of…

Federal law defines English learner (EL) eligibility differently for Indigenous, compared to non-Indigenous, students, allowing for broader entry into the EL category, along with its accompanying resources and services. We interviewed EL leaders from 25 state departments of education to learn about their level of understanding of the…

Educating students with disabilities with those without in integrated physical education has become commonplace. While literature has identified that the subjective experiences of students with disabilities in such integrated settings have often included bullying, isolation, and discrimination, little is known about the experiences of those in…

Debates about grade retention weigh the academic benefits of remediation against its social and psychological costs. Louisiana adopted a retention policy aimed at capturing these benefits while mitigating the harm. It used test score thresholds to distinguish between retention in grade 8, promotion to grade 9, and a grade "8.5" where…

School voucher programs are scholarship initiatives -- frequently government funded or incentivized -- that pay for students to attend private schools of their choice. This study is the first formal meta-analytic consolidation of the evidence from all randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the student-level math and reading test score…

The International Technology and Engineering Educators Association (ITEEA's) Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) Center for Teaching and Learning's Engineering by Design™ (EbD™) is a standards based Integrative STEM Education model program that provides curriculum, professional development, and assessments to K-12 schools. This article…

In this excerpt from How to educate an American: The conservative vision for tomorrow's schools, William J. Bennett argues that instilling knowledge, not just skills, is an important element of good schooling. In fact, developing certain skills actually requires a considerable amount of background knowledge. He offers examples of states that have…

Employing phenomenology as a methodological framework, this study sought to capture and understand, from a first-person point of view, what parents, teachers, and administrators in U.S. high-needs K-12 schools experienced related to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individual interviews were conducted on a video conferencing platform…

A priority of agricultural teacher education programs is to develop technically competent, prepared school-based agricultural education (SBAE) teachers. SBAE teachers should be knowledgeable in various agricultural subject matter, such as agricultural mechanics. Using Roberts and Ball's (2009) Content-based Model for Teaching Agriculture as the…

Louisiana is currently the only state in the United States that requires foreign language (FL) study for some, but not all of their high school students, and these requirements are undergoing seismic changes. Considering that "geographic," "economic," and "integration" factors contribute to whether a school can…

This study described how agricultural education majors at Louisiana State University visually represented and narrated their concerns about teaching. To accomplish this, students captured photos during early field experiences (EFEs) and then critically reflected on those experiences through focus group interviews during the Fall 2018 and Fall 2019…

This study explored how school administrators understand and plan for French immersion program components in K-12 schools in Louisiana. The theory of effective bilingual schooling and the Guiding Principles for Dual Language Education served as the framework of the study. The research questions that guided the study asked how school principals and…