Background/Context: Ethnic Studies is an umbrella term for a group of academic disciplines attentive to identifying oppression, restorying history, and creating liberatory futures. These disciplines were born from social movements, with students, educators, and community members demanding educational spaces guided by people who looked like them,…

The largest system of higher education in the nation, the California Community Colleges (CCC) has disappeared more than one million students in the past 15 years, a 35% decrease in its student body since 2008 despite California's population increase. This dramatic shrinking of the CCC system was not an accident. It was manufactured by a vast…

This commentary reflects on what it means to have a mandatory policy for supporting trans students in education settings, drawing on the South Australian context. The authors argue that for policy to be productive, it needs to move beyond a document to being implemented in practice.

Context: The rich contextualization of educational processes brought about in the pioneering work of Jean Anyon pushed scientists to acknowledge that the education being provided to the least advantaged was shaped by factors with origins beyond school and family environments. Political economic work in education has subsequently argued that an…

Background: After the turn of the 21st century in New York City, mayor Michael Bloomberg launched major initiatives to open new small schools and new charter schools as a central piece of a strategy to transform schooling and produce dramatically better results. Although more than 550 new public schools and charter schools were established in New…

Background/Context: While trans adults in the U.S. and Canada report higher levels of discrimination and harassment than cisgender adults, but the existing literature lacks comprehensive descriptions of trans school workers' believes about what would improve working conditions, satisfaction, and safety. Purpose: We interrogate systemic forces…

Background/Context: Robust civic engagement by young adults supports the aims of a democratic society, as well as college- and university-espoused commitments to the public good. Civic engagement also benefits students themselves. Although voting participation among young adults has shown modest increases from 2016 to 2020, work remains to be done…

Background: In recent years, school districts have experienced a complex policy environment with myriad reforms aimed at addressing longstanding and historically entrenched disparities in opportunities and outcomes between racially minoritized students and White students. One such reform is standards-based accountability, with its emphasis on…

As the largest international student group in U.S. higher education, Chinese international students have been made particularly vulnerable due to the resurgence of anti-Asian racism and U.S.-China geopolitical tensions. There is therefore a pressing need to make sense of Chinese international students' perspectives and experiences around U.S.…

Background/Context: Opt-out is a national movement based on local efforts as most notably expressed in New York. While studies have addressed opt-out demographics and local impact, fewer studies address the political activism that extends beyond the act of refusing specific tests to changing standardized testing policy. Purpose/Objective/Research…

Background: Promise programs are a quickly spreading policy tool in the free college movement. Despite their rapid spread, promise programs remain generally untested and there is even less information about how they are implemented. Research Questions: (1) In what ways were The Degree Project's (TDP) theory of change and intents represented in…

Background: In recent years, intermediary organizations have increasingly influenced educational policy. Among other proposals, they have promoted teacher education redesign based on technocratic values and stringent accountability measures. In response to these policy changes and the intensifying crisis in the teaching profession, teacher…

Background/Context: Chronic absenteeism has received increased attention from educational leaders and policy makers, in part because of the association between attendance and important student outcomes. Student attendance is influenced by a range of student-, school-, and community-level characteristics, suggesting that a comprehensive and…

Background/Context: Since 2013, opting out of state standardized tests has become a movement--the grassroots, organized efforts to refuse to take high-stakes state standardized tests. In particular, opt-out rates in the state of New York have been consistently fluctuating around 20%. Purpose/Objective: This study aims to examine the actor…

Background/Context: In the spring of 2015, about 135,000 New Jersey students--almost 20% of the test-eligible children--did not take the state's test. Opposition of this magnitude directly contradicted a central stipulation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), which required states to test 95% of their eligible students to…