Three trends have characterized state policymaking for higher education in the 21st century: divestment, accountability, and race neutrality. These policy agendas are often justified as an attempt to optimize system efficiency and performance by making institutional actors (agents) responsive to the demands of state officials (principals). In this…

The purpose of this article is to compel educators to think critically about how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a prominent school-based legislation in the United States, and caregiver/parental participation relate to each other and to equity in special education outcomes. I use two illustrative case studies to show how…

The U.S. Department of Education introduced the four-year adjusted cohort high school graduation rate formula in 2008 to usher high school graduation in as a high-stakes accountability metric. This policy sought to address disparate graduation rates by student race but did not attend to systemic reasons why minoritized students had lower…

Students who are Black or Hispanic are now reported to be less likely to be identified as having disabilities than similarly situated students who are White. Although repeatedly replicated, this finding is often characterized as in error. I use a new statistical technique, the E-value, to quantify the likelihood that unmeasured confounding…

We used time-varying effect modelling of two very large samples of fourth-grade students (N[subscript reading] = 148,240, N[subscript mathematics] = 152,220) to investigate associations between adoption and over-time implementation of a de facto cap on special education service receipt and over-time likelihoods of disability identification from…

On this 50th-year anniversary of "Alexander v. Holmes Board of Education" (1969) nationally enforcing school desegregation in fall 1970, Mississippi is being sued for racial disparities in public education between Black students and White students in Williams et al. v. Bryant et al. (2017). Using quantitative and qualitative primary…

Exclusionary discipline practices in the United States are used disproportionately in the punishment of Black students with a disability compared to White and Black students with or without a disability. One potential mechanism leading to the disproportionate use of exclusionary discipline is a process called 'manifestation determination reviews'…

This study presents a longitudinal analysis of racial inequities evidenced in placement patterns in the least restrictive environment (LRE). We compared placement trends in neighborhoods and charter schools for Black and White students receiving special education services (SRSES). Drawing from the concept of "institutional isomorphism"…

We draw on novel district-level test score data to describe novel approaches for measuring ethnoracial achievement gaps and assessing trends toward achievement equity from 2009 to 2016. Using SEDA data, we estimate gap trends for each grade over time in each district. We measure trends in both within-district gaps--comparing Black or Hispanic to…

This study uses a North Carolina administrative data set to analyze racial segregation and student achievement in Wake County during race-based and income-based school assignment plans. We find a modest increase in the level of racial segregation in Wake schools during the income-based plan, but compared with other large districts in the state,…

State policymakers in the United States have in recent years experimented with new initiatives to change the procedures used by public institutions to assess and assign academically underprepared students to non-credit developmental education (or remedial) courses. This study explores whether the most recent developmental education reform in…

To examine whether special education racial risk ratios reported by U.S. school districts are explained by district-level confounds, particularly, racial achievement gaps, we analyzed merged data (N = 1,952 districts for Black-White comparisons; N = 2,571 districts for Hispanic-White comparisons) from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of…

In response to growing concerns about the impact of harsh immigration enforcement policy since the 2016 presidential campaign, we examined its overall impact on the nation's schools, using survey data completed by over 3,600 educators across the country. Our study results show that immigration enforcement is affecting all students--both those from…

Recent trends in higher education financing have increased students' need to borrow to afford college. This brief examines how federal student loan borrowing has changed from 2000 to 2016 by student race/ethnicity using logistic regression analysis and data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). We find that the odds of…

Testing and accountability measures have continued to expand since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. In addition to school and district accountability, student test scores increasingly formed the foundation of teacher performance metrics. State participation rates exceeded the 95% minimum prescribed by law despite increasing…