Prohibited concept laws have a chilling effect on teaching, resulting in the erasure of social justice topics; however, the extent to which district-level actors support such laws or the role they play in perpetuating the effect is unclear. I offer a framework for understanding how district-level policy messaging contributes to the chilling effect…

One of the first challenges state boards of education faced this spring was what to do for the roughly 3.5 million high school seniors whose graduations were derailed by the coronavirus. Most state policymakers across the country readily suspended end-of-year assessments and granted diplomas to those who were on track to graduate. A few states…

Tennessee's State Board of Education developed Educator Diversity Policy 5.700 to promote the recruitment and retention of educators from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Accordingly, districts throughout the state develop annual diversity goals that reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of their student population and strategies for…

To best train and support school leaders in their evolving roles, they require high-quality preparation and in-service pipelines that both address the changing demands on their positions and acknowledge the cascading effects that well-prepared leaders have on both student outcomes and in school culture and retention. Including school leaders in…

In this study, we seek to illuminate teachers' constructions of US teacher evaluation policies through close analysis of the way teachers in one district describe these policies. We conducted a thematic discursive analysis of 60 teachers' speeches, recorded during local school board meetings in a Tennessee school district. Using discursive…

Many layers of education governance press upon U.S. schools, so we separated state actors into those internal to and those external to the system. In the process, we unpacked the traditional state-local dichotomy. Using interview data (n = 45) from six case-study states, we analyzed local leaders', state-internal actors', and state-external…

This report provides six mini-case studies of higher education policy reforms enacted in other states, exploring the important role that state policy leadership played in developing, promoting, and implementing these policies aimed at improving higher education outcomes, and discussing the relevance of each reform effort for California. This…

The accountability focus in higher education historically has been directed at the institutional level. The purpose of this comparative case study, however, was to look at state-level accountability. The research focused on the processes used in Tennessee, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Interviews were conducted with higher education administrators…

Profiles of the 14 states of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) provide information on the structure of these states for public postsecondary education and budgeting. For each state, the following areas are discussed: state-level coordinating and/or governing agency, institutional governing boards, state board for vocational education,…

This study surveyed the attitudes of public policy makers in higher education from Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee to find areas for developing fundamental policies for desegregation. A total of 71 surveys were mailed to state higher education executive officers (SHEEOs), legislative chairs of education or of higher…

Professional development is an essential part of effective organizations, challenging policymakers and educators to create conditions conducive to student and teacher learning in each school. Tennessee's State Board of Education adopted a policy, consistent with the Education Improvement Act, pertaining to professional development which provides a…

Three key political decisions made in Tennessee higher education that have brought about major changes in structure and have implications for the future are discussed. The decisions are: creation of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) in 1967, the creation of the State Board of Regents (SBR) in 1972, and the establishment of the…

Members of the Tennessee General Assembly, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and its staff, the State Board of Regents and its professional staff, and members of the Presidents' Council and Sub-Councils (N=237) were surveyed to identify the most critical issues facing Tennessee public community colleges and to develop implications for…

In April, 1919, at the request of the Board of Education of Memphis, Tennessee, the United States Commissioner of Education submitted the conditions on which the Bureau of Education would make a survey of the public school system of that city. This study of the Memphis schools is intended to be a study of policies and practices; not of persons.…