Internationally, major policy reforms seek to deepen parent and community engagement in schools. Whilst pervasive in policy documents, however, discourses surrounding 'parent engagement' are often elastic and imprecise, ultimately gaining meaning through the technologies of governance that shape policy enactments in schools. In this paper, we…

Researchers and policymakers alike recognize the lasting benefits of participation in high-quality arts coursework and in integrating arts into other content areas. Federal policymakers signaled their support for arts education by passing the Every Student Succeeds Act, with its inclusion of the arts as part of a "wellrounded education."…

The advent of social media has, in many ways, changed the way people communicate with one another as it has added a real-time component and multiple platforms from which people can communicate. School districts are not exempt from the evolution of communication into the digital realm. Districts have an obligation to maximize their home-school…

This descriptive analysis of policy content examined local school district policies on physical restraint and seclusion in one Midwestern state that did not have state legislation on these topics to determine whether districts had policies and, if so, whether their content included recommended principles from the U.S. Department of Education. No…

The Board of Education's mission is to equitably educate the whole child so that every student graduates with the tools to reach their full potential (Houston Independent School District (HISD), 2019). To succeed in their mission, the board participates in Lone Star Governance, whose intent is to provide a continuous improvement model for…

State postsecondary education governance systems play an important role in the policy and decisionmaking processes that affect a state's ability to pursue its education and workforce goals. In general, postsecondary education governance relates to the responsibilities and authority of entities and leadership positions charged with developing,…

Despite the continued practice of adopting new educational policies to improve outcomes for students in our public school systems, the implementation of school district improvement rests with the central office administrators charged with leading school districts across the country. The magnitude of this work and lack of attention given to…

While issues of higher education access, opportunity, and impact are hotly debated on the floors of Congress and in state legislatures, it is the state's higher education executive officer (SHEEO) who is expected to be an innovative policymaker, an astute political actor, an all-seeing fortune-teller, and a rapid problem-solver. These…

National philanthropies have recently played a prominent role in spending on U.S. urban school board elections, largely seeking to promote candidates who support charter schools. In Atlanta in 2017, 30 candidates competed for nine open school board seats. One practice has been to fund intermediary organisations (IOs) (e.g. advocacy groups,…

Background: Youth participatory action research (YPAR) is an equity-focused approach intended to generate local knowledge and democratise the production of research evidence. Aims/objectives: We explore the promise and challenges of YPAR to inform education policy decision making. We focus on California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF)'s…

During the summer, children from low-income families typically have fewer opportunities than their peers from more-affluent families for academic, cultural, athletic, and other activities. Such differences in opportunity can lead low-income students to fall behind their higher-income peers during summer. Free summer learning programs offering…

When San Francisco implemented a new policy to improve graduation rates and college enrollment, district officials realized their work was only beginning. San Francisco Unified School District revamped its college-ready graduation policy in 2009, hoping to increase the likelihood that students would graduate with the necessary courses to go to a…

We studied a case of a school in a high need setting that undertook multiple simultaneous initiatives during a major school reorganization. We focused on the simultaneous implementations of two comprehensive initiatives, one related to ambitious mathematics teaching and one related to the Understanding by Design curriculum writing process. We…

Parents, educators, advocates, and state policymakers alike want excellence in teaching and learning every day for every educator and student. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) gives states renewed authority as well as leverage to make this vision a reality. The role of state boards of education in this process cannot be underestimated. State…

This paper reports on the first nationwide census examining sustainability uptake in policy initiatives in Canadian K-12 education. Included in the study are each of Canada's 13 provincial and territorial ministries of education, and all 374 public school divisions across the country. Sustainability was defined as including, at minimum,…