California approved a massive overhaul of its byzantine and unequal school finance system when the state Legislature passed and Governor Jerry Brown signed the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in 2013. LCFF featured a new state finance model, but it was much more than a change in finance distribution formulas. It also provided districts with…

The secondary-to-postsecondary transition is a critically important step on a student's path toward economic success. The majority of jobs in the United States continue to require some sort of postsecondary attainment, whether that be a bachelor's degree, associate's degree, or other college coursework. However, the nation loses students as they…

In K-12 education, the increased focus on social and emotional learning (SEL) is viewed as an unambiguously positive development--a welcome course correction after more than two decades of focus on academic standards, testing, and accountability. But SEL, which is typically presented as an academic enhancement, not a distraction, carries more…

This Data Point examines the supplemental school year income earned at jobs outside the school system by public school teachers in the United States. It uses data from the public school teacher survey of the 2017-18 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS), which is a national sample survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and…

In today's schools, differences in family income and in school funding create stark discrepancies in the educational experiences, opportunities, and outcomes between student "haves" and "have nots." This chapter describes how equity-focused teacher leaders can use equity audits to positively influence educational policy and…

Discussions of diversity in relation to children's education are often characterized by binaries of same/different, mainstream/margins, inclusion/exclusion, self/Other. Curriculum remains a contested site in educational debate, with differing views about curriculum as reinforcing social norms, beliefs, and values, as addressing the learning and…

Restorative Justice (RJ) is an educational "innovation" introduced into school communities as a counter approach to traditional punitive discipline practices. In this paper, we provide a critical examination of RJ in education by naming common pitfalls to RJ implementation in schools and providing four transformational cultural shifts…

Public education depends on expertise, work, money, and cooperation from multiple actors who have different interests and beliefs. These lead to competition and negotiation--in other words, politics. Failure to consider the politics of reform implementation and sustainability has doomed many promising K-12 school improvement initiatives. This…

The latest reforms to the GCSE Subject Content attempt to bring languages in line with other subject areas through a quantification of the material that needs to be learnt and a focus on the linguistic system, to the detriment of the broader communicative aims associated with 'knowing a language'. This article suggests that the reforms expose a…

The U.S. elementary and secondary teaching force in recent decades has changed significantly and in important, sometimes surprising ways. It has become far larger, far less experienced, less diverse by gender, and more diverse by race/ethnicity. And it remains unstable. Yet researchers, policymakers, and the public appear not to have much marked…

Geographic information systems (GIS) have endured numerous evolutionary changes in information technology (IT), from mainframe computers to microcomputers, to personal computers, and to web and mobile technologies (Sinton and Kerski 2020). In this article, Joseph Kerski argues that GIS has not only endured as a persistent set of tools and…

Teacher attrition is squarely in the policy spotlight. Major news outlets have featured recent stories highlighting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on teacher shortages. In this brief, the authors frame the magnitude of teacher attrition during the pandemic, including from the 2020-2021 school year to the 2021-22 school year, using publicly…

The healthy development and well-being of Black, Native, and Latinx youth are threatened when authority figures, decision makers, and other adult gatekeepers involved in systems of care perpetuate negative racial and ethnic stereotypes and/or hold implicit biases. Often, the outcomes of these perceptions are punishment-based systems that are…

Idaho faces a twin challenge in the market for public school students. With only 40 percent of students proficient in math and 55 percent proficient in reading across all grades statewide, the state needs higher-quality schools to give all its students access to great educational options. Added to that, Idaho was the second-fastest-growing state…

Equitable representation within a school occurs when the principals, teachers, or other school-based leaders reflect the racial and cultural diversity of the local communities they serve. When students of color, who have historically been underestimated and underserved in our nation's schools, see themselves in the teachers and leaders at their…