As the COVID-19 Pandemic intensified in the spring, school and system leaders throughout the South rapidly pivoted toward distance learning. The Southern Education Foundation (SEF) sought to understand how these districts were keeping equity issues at the center of their plans. The team began by publishing "Distance Learning During COVID-19:…

We use data collected between April 2020 and March 2021 from the Understanding America Survey, a nationally representative internet panel of approximately 1,450 households with school-age children, to document the access of American households to K-12 education during the COVID-19 crisis. We also explore disparities by parent race/ethnicity,…

While they're often overlooked in education policy debates, district central office staff can play critical role in improving schools. In this interview, Meredith Honig, professor of Education Policy, Organizations, and Leadership at the University of Washington and founder of the District Leadership Lab, explains what her research and experience…

The Teacher Rotation Policy (TRP) is a recent teacher policy developed in the context of China. TRP seeks to close China's teacher quality disparities through rotating 'high-quality' urban schoolteachers to teach in hard-to-staff rural schools for a period of time. This qualitative case study examined how five policy actors carried out TRP in one…

Very little is known about the complaint investigation process in the Office for Civil Rights, despite its scope and reach. We examine key parameters (number and types of complaints received, types of resolutions, average time of resolution) of civil rights complaints nationwide over a 20-year period (1999-2019). We find that 10%-40% of all…

Purpose: Over the past decade, policy researchers and advocates have called for the decentralization of teacher hiring decisions from district offices to school principals. The purpose of this paper is to document the trends across two and a half decades in principals' reported influence over teacher hiring decisions in the USA and explore how and…

From funding to teacher quality, inequities exist between school districts. This paper adds to the literature on inequities by examining the impact of pension plan formulas on pension benefits. Using data from the salary schedules of 464 Missouri school districts, this paper analyzes how various final average salary calculations would impact the…

Most countries around the world have temporarily closed educational institutions with the aim of containing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. How have schools overcome these challenges and delivered education during the confinement period? The purpose of this research was to analyse how primary and secondary schools in Catalonia (Spain)…

This study sought to predict U.S. public-school principals' risk of turnover using nationally representative data. After screening several personal and school characteristics that might predict the likelihood of principals leaving their jobs, a logistic regression analysis was employed using 15 significant predictors out of 37 variables identified…

Education in the 21st century increasingly relies on strong, reliable access to the internet at school and at home. However, millions of students throughout the United States are unable to connect to the internet outside of school to complete coursework and actively participate in a modern education. This issue exists throughout educational…

Across the United States, students attending rural school districts can face different obstacles than their urban counterparts, particularly rural students from households living below the federal poverty level. But how rural districts are defined can vary by federal, state, and local entity and can sometimes not capture the difficulties specific…

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has highlighted a 'vicious cycle of decline' in rural, regional and remote (RRR) regions, with significant inequalities in educational outcomes between rural and urban areas. However, interventions have not resulted in transformative or lasting improvements to education in rural…

In the wake of COVID-19, the California legislature mandated that local educational agencies (LEAs) develop detailed Learning Continuity and Attendance Plans (LCPs) to address student learning and progress during the 2020-21 academic year. This brief summarizes results of an analysis of nearly 1,000 LCPs from public school districts across the…

As the COVID-19 crisis disrupted schooling, recovery efforts to ensure educational continuity in California included the adoption of Senate Bill 98, which mandated local educational agencies (LEAs) to complete Learning Continuity and Attendance Plans (LCPs). These plans act as critical snapshots of sensemaking in the midst of crisis; however,…

This report builds on and updates many of the findings from the original nationally representative survey of Pre-K to 12 principals in 2017. The central messages of this 2019 update are: (1) principals continue to see social and emotional learning (SEL) skills as highly teachable and a priority in their schools; (2) more schools are implementing…