School improvement planning can serve as a mechanism for school leaders to identify and address inequities. Yet, despite longstanding mandates, the empirical evidence base on school improvement plans (SIPs) is surprisingly limited, and even less literature focuses on the intersection of equity and school improvement planning. Using a conventional…

Tuition levels in the US have been rising at an above-the-inflation pace, leading to spiraling student debt levels and negative effects on students' well-being. While student outcomes of rising tuition are well known, the political reasons behind the decisions of policy makers to contain tuition increases or not remain poorly understood. In this…

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…

Education reform in the United States has unwisely focused attention on standards and accountability to the state as determined by standardized testing (Berliner & Biddle, 1995; Mehta, 2013). Stemming from the emphasis on standards-based accountability are the ideas of rapid school "turnaround" and the state's role in this process…

This study used the historical research method to explore the Chinese government's role in building world-class universities. We traced the government's role in pushing policies for: (1) accelerating academic improvement; and (2) enhancing the involvement of provincial governments in achieving universities' world-class status. The findings…

In this article, Frederick Hess discusses a concept he calls "greenfield schooling." The premise is simple: Profound educational improvement requires more than fine-tuning systems that have evolved over two centuries; it requires policymakers and educational leaders to revisit organizing assumptions about the grammar of schooling. In…

Over the past 80 years' university administrators have exhibited flexibility in their responses to evolving government funding patterns. One possible factor in these changes is the consequences of policy decisions at the federal and state government levels that have resulted in institution wide policy decisions in colleges and universities. These…

Due to resource constraints in the Indian education sector, efficiency assessment of the higher education is more essential for the proper allocation and the effective utilization of financial and human resources. Moreover, much of the research in the higher education sector has mainly focused on the quality of education and ignored the role of…

The Ohio Statewide Family Engagement Center (OhSFEC) is implementing a comprehensive, scalable approach to enact state policy for family and school engagement at local levels. Joyce Epstein and Barbara Boone report how OhSFEC's research-based design, implementation, and evaluation of a leadership ladder has enabled state leaders to support…

This year marks the 20th year of National Access and Finance Survey (NAFS) studies of access and funding issues in public higher education. National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges (NCSDCC) members are surveyed because of their broad knowledge of access and finance issues across education sectors and state government as well. For…

At the beginning of the 21st century, higher education began to concentrate on leveling the playing field around admission. While this work is still unfolding, in the second decade of the last century, attention also began to be paid to identifying strategies that would improve student success and completion for all students, but especially for…

The COVID-19 pandemic struck during a period of extreme polarization in American politics. Unsurprisingly, responses to it quickly became politicized despite increasingly clear findings from scientific and public health communities about the most effective approaches for limiting its spread. We ask how the politicization affected pandemic response…

Two years of disruptions to schooling, coupled with recession and other pandemic-induced effects, appear to have widened preK-12 educational inequality. In particular, low-income students of color fell further behind their higher income White peers than they were pre-pandemic, on average, with the largest declines in math achievement. High-dosage…

The economic fallout of the layoffs and business closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc for New England workers--especially those who were already facing a structurally vulnerable workforce and employment system before the pandemic. What can state governments do to stimulate job creation and make New England's economy more…

In this essay, Jack Schneider and Andrew Saultz offer a new perspective on state and federal power through their analysis of authority and control. Due to limitations inherent to centralized governance, state and federal offices of education exercised little control over schools across much of the twentieth century, even as they acquired…