The role a school and its teachers play in a child's life is undeniable. Both influence how children understand the world they live in, their place in that world, and their perceptions of future possibilities. Schools where students have opportunities to engage with multicultural curriculum materials, experience culturally responsive and…

This technical brief is part of an ongoing series the Center for Learner Equity (CLE) launched in 2015 that examines the enrollment and experiences of students with disabilities in different school settings. Using the 2017-2018 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) data released earlier this year, this brief focuses on the number and percentages of…

Definitions of teacher experience vary by state and research study. Most states consider a teacher inexperienced if they have between 1-5 years of experience in the classroom as full-time educator. Pennsylvania's 2015 plan identified inexperienced teachers as those with one or less years of teaching experience, but the federal Civil Rights Data…

The commitment to Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) has come at a precarious time, which finds education and schooling under attack by hate-filled and dehumanizing rhetoric. The current socio-political climate situates education and teachers as a public enemy, and an onslaught of anti-equity education bills in legislatures have been…

This third of six briefs analyzing data from the U.S. Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), covering the 2020-21 school year, explores the educational settings where students with disabilities spend their time. As was the case in the analysis of the previous CRDC covering the 2018-19 school year, students with disabilities spend more time in…

This final of six briefs analyzing data from the U.S. Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), covering the 2020-21 school year, explores the characteristics of the 176 charter schools with a specific focus on students with disabilities. This group, representing 2.3% of charter schools nationwide, is heavily concentrated in a handful of states and is…

This critical ethnography utilizes critical policy analysis and a theoretical understanding of neoliberal racism to examine the practiced reality of school choice in a public, under-resourced, and historically underperforming neighborhood elementary school attended predominantly by Latina/o/x students. Despite improvement initiatives that resulted…

Access issues are pivotal to almost all charter school tensions and debates. How well are these schools performing? Are they segregating and stratifying? Are they public and democratic? Are they fairly funded? Can apparent successes be scaled up? Answers to all these core questions hinge on how access to charter schools is shaped. This book…

Urban South Grassroots Research Collective for Public Education (USGRC) is a New Orleans-based coalition melding research and grassroots organizing for racial-economic equity. Buras examines her involvement as a scholar activist working in solidarity with community groups to document the effects of the charter school takeover on black public…

Critical consciousness refers to the ability to analyze and take action against oppressive social forces shaping society. This longitudinal, mixed methods study compared the critical consciousness development of adolescents of color (n = 453) attending two sets of high schools featuring schooling models that represent "opposing"…

We describe the levels, trends, and patterns of school closure and restructuring in the United States from 1991 to 2019 across all sectors using a near census of K-12 schools. Focusing on the years with the best available data, 2014-2018, we find that the annual closure rate of charter, private, and traditional public schools (TPS) were 5.1, 2.9,…

Charter schools continue to grow in influence, as does the push for inclusive education for students with disabilities. What is the value and impact of these schools, especially on the marginalized populations they often serve? Relying on the fields of DisCrit, and Sociology of Special and Inclusive Education, this book answers these questions by…

The Department of Education Charter Schools Program (CSP) provides grants to open or expand charter schools. Enrollment in charter schools that received CSP grants grew from 213,576 to 1,380,530 students from school years 2006-07 to 2020-21. This report examines (1) enrollment growth at new charter schools that received CSP grants compared to…

In the United States, charter school proliferation remains a top priority for neoliberal education reformers and their private sector allies. Such schools are owned and run by private operators yet receive public funding, resulting in large transfers of public assets into private hands. Co-location facilitates this process by providing charters…

Against the backdrop of the debate around exclusionary discipline practices, this case study asks readers to consider how leaders must balance autonomy with concerns about accountability and equity. In this case, a traditional public school principal in search of more autonomy accepts a principalship at a charter school, but as she attempts to…