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…

In recent years, record numbers of undocumented and asylum-seeking families and children from Mexico and Northern Triangle countries--El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras--crossed the U.S. southwest border in search of safety and opportunity. Some cross undetected, without registering with immigration authorities and becoming…

Migration over the U.S. southwest border in the past decade has been composed of growing numbers of undocumented and asylum-seeking families and children from Mexico and Central America, with larger increases starting in fiscal year (FY) 2017. By U.S. law, states must provide education to all children, regardless of immigration status. Yet…

This topic paper details how dual and concurrent enrollment programs can help states overcome workforce readiness and postsecondary access and completion challenges and how governors can strengthen these programs by using their bully pulpit, agenda setting authority and budgetary authority to do so. It concludes with a number of examples of how…

There is growing unease about suspension and expulsion of children at the preschool level. Preschoolers are expelled at three times the rate of K-12 students (Gilliam, 2005). Boys--particularly African-American boys--comprise a disproportionate number of these cases, a fact that has caused concern among parents, policymakers, and advocates alike.…

More than 60 years after the ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education" was handed down, its promise remains unfulfilled. In many respects, America's public schools continue to be "separate and unequal." Indeed, the growing re-segregation of American schools by race and ethnicity, compounded by economic class segregation, has…

In this article, Kristen L. Buras examines educational policy formation in New Orleans and the racial, economic, and spatial dynamics shaping the city's reconstruction since 2005. More specifically, Buras draws on the critical theories of whiteness as property, accumulation by dispossession, and urban space economy to describe the strategic…

"Between Public and Private" examines an innovative approach to school district management that has been adopted by a number of urban districts in recent years: a portfolio management model, in which "a central office oversees a portfolio of schools offering diverse organizational and curricular themes, including traditional public…

This report examines efforts by 12 formerly segregated states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia) to desegregate their higher education systems and increase educational opportunities for black and other minority students. It found that none of the…

The "State Teacher Policy Yearbook" examines what is arguably the single most powerful authority over the teaching profession: state government. This Louisiana edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality's (NCTQ's) "State Teacher Policy Yearbook" is the first of what will be an annual look at the status of state policies…