A large proportion of high schools across the country have adopted education and career planning requirements intended to help students prepare for postsecondary education and to facilitate successful transitions to the labor market. This study used student and counselor survey responses from a nationally representative longitudinal dataset to…

This Study Snapshot highlights key findings from a study that seeks to provide Arizona policymakers with national evidence about the education and career planning elements associated with students' college-going behaviors. This correlational study used nationally representative data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 to examine the…

The "Education and Career Planning in High School: A National Study of School and Student Characteristics and College-Going Behaviors" study examined the relationships between students' participation in three core elements of education and career planning during high school and their application, course-taking, and enrollment behaviors…

In anticipation of the 2020-21 school year, states have been creating and updating guidance for district and school reopening plans. This policy update outlines how state guidelines informed by public health guidelines and existing data on the state spread of COVID-19 established a process for engaging stakeholders, a menu of approaches to…

Despite the central role schools have played in the resettlement of refugees, we know little about how principals, teachers, parents, and staff at community-based organizations interpret and negotiate national immigration policy and state education policies. Combing critical discourse analysis (CDA) and actor-network theory (ANT), we capture how…

Two consequentially related education policy topics in the United States are kindergarten entry assessments (KEAs) and the growing number of students who are "English learners" (ELs). In this study, I compared the content of, and home language use policies for six state KEAs, all of which were comprised of items from the GOLD®…

Informed by interviews with campus administrators and Northern Arizona University (NAU) students, the "Student Success is the DNA of NAU" case study outlines strategies this public, four-year, Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) is employing to build NAU into an engine of opportunity for students and the communities they represent. The…

A key goal of school choice policies is to generate competition between schools, which should theoretically drive school leaders to improve their programs to attract and retain students. However, few studies examine how principals actually perceive and define competition. This article empirically examines school leaders' conceptions of competition…

As the most restrictive language policy context in the United States, Arizona's monolingual and prescriptive approach to teaching English learners continues to capture international attention. More than five school years after initial implementation, this study uses qualitative data from the individuals doing the policy work to provide a holistic…

With the 2015 passage of the "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA), the oversight of language policy in U.S. schools shifted from federal to state governance. Although the education of students officially designated as English learners (ELs) has historically been grounded in federal law, we argue that ELs' educational experiences are also…

Although current and former English Learner (EL) or "ever-EL" students comprise one of the fastest-growing K-12 populations, we still know relatively little about the factors that influence their college-going. Using Perna's seminal college-going model as a launching point, we propose a policy-driven empirical approach to explore how…

TransferBOOST (Bachelor's Opportunity Options that are Straightforward and Transparent) is a multi-year state-level initiative developed to provide students with affordable, quality, well-supported two- to four-year pathways. For every 100 students who enroll in community colleges, 31 students transfer to a four-year institution. Of those, only 15…

This brief reviews state plans submitted to the U.S. Department of Education as of October 1, 2017. It focuses on three key topics for early learning in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): setting clear goals and policy priorities for early learning, integrating early learning into school improvement, and supporting early childhood educator…

Despite scant empirical support, Arizona's restrictive language policy (Proposition 203, 2000) sustains as a result of the veneer of democracy (a political strategy that projects equitable inclinations while shielding inequitable ideologies). This article compares findings from an ethnographic study of one linguistically diverse Arizona high…

I analyze two bills from the state legislatures of California (SB 1174) and Arizona (SB 1242) that propose to expand bilingual education where English-only education was previously the default. Using a critical discourse analysis lens to conduct a directed content analysis, I ask who bilingual education is for, why it is offered, and how the…