This article examines the unique situation of New Jersey Public Schools being ranked the best in the nation while simultaneously being ranked the worst in the nation for inclusion of students with disabilities. An examination of the legal and theoretical underpinnings of inclusion is presented, followed by a review of current research in general…

No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act have made accountability central to conversations about education policy. But neither statute articulates a clear vision of what constitutes "quality" or "equity" in education, nor do they include a mechanism to ensure that schools have sufficient resources to pursue that…

Parents make choices about their children's education within a neoliberal, racist system. Measurable metrics are used to evaluate school quality within a competitive, market-based system, yet those indicators often do not align with parents' definitions of a good school, and they obscure the role of race. This paper examines how white, privileged…

This issue represents one of the first objective, collaborative pieces addressing Social Emotional Learning (SEL) across all arts content areas in diverse areas of policy. The results justify further investigation into the congruence of the arts and SEL, exploring examples of SEL instruction in the arts, and the development of consistent messages…

The purpose of this research is to analyze basic prerequisites formation and development factors of educational clusters of the world's leading nations for studying the possibility of cluster policy introduction and creating educational clusters in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The authors of this study concluded that educational cluster could be…

Lawsuits challenging state methods for funding public schools have been launched in 46 of the 50 states, and in recent years they have been extraordinarily successful. Since 1989, plaintiffs have prevailed in over 65 percent of the final liability decisions in cases based on "adequacy claims"--assertions that all students have a…

The author, a former school board member and currently head of nationwide parent organization, assesses the competition between charter and traditional public schools, concluding that the competition and acrimony among them does not help them deliver a better education. Policies should be focused on helping both types of schools improve education,…

Housing choice vouchers provide low-income households with additional income to spend on rental housing in the private market. The assistance vouchers provide is substantial, offering the potential to dramatically expand the neighborhood--and associated public schools--that low-income households can reach. However, existing research on the program…

Publicly funded pre-K is often touted as a means to narrow achievement gaps, but this goal is less likely to be achieved if poor and/or minority children do not, at a minimum, attend equal quality pre-K as their non-poor, non-minority peers. In this paper, I find large "quality gaps" in public pre-K between poor, minority students and…

This study investigates the relationship between internal teacher profiles and pre-K teacher-child interaction quality in the pre-K classroom. Two questions were addressed: (1) What internal profiles exist for pre-kindergarten (pre-K) teachers? and (2) Do internal profiles relate to observed structural and process quality in the pre-K classroom?…

Mary O'Sullivan writes that she spent part of her sabbatical leave interviewing teacher educators from nine countries across three continents exploring teacher education contexts both nationally and locally, and the nature of the 'teacher educators' work in these contexts. Three issues struck her: (1) The intensification of regulation and policy…

While assessment is normally conducted at a programmatic (degree, or institution-wide) level, it is interesting and informative to learn where specific courses fit into assessment and how those courses have been adjusted in response to data collected in the assessment process. As members of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB), the…

Mentoring is a common form of support for beginning teachers. State and district mentoring policies vary along a number of dimensions, yet policymakers have little evidence to draw on in designing effective mentoring programs. We use quantitative and qualitative data from a study of beginning middle school mathematics teachers in 10 districts to…

Darling-Hammond, Wilhoit, and Pittenger (2014) addressed the need for states to align their accountability systems with new college- and career-ready learning standards. The authors recommended a new accountability paradigm that focuses on 1) meaningful learning, enabled by 2) professionally skilled and committed educators, and supported by 3)…

Research Findings: As policymakers expand access to preschool, the sociodemographic composition of preschool classrooms will become increasingly important. These efforts may create programs that increase the concentration of children from low-income families or, alternatively, foster the creation of socioeconomically diverse preschool classrooms.…