A document from the U.S. Department of Education intended to clarify schools' responsibility to make sure students with disabilities have access to extracurricular sports has drawn sharply different opinions. Disability-rights advocates welcome the guidance, while critics say federal officials are pushing requirements that could place new…

This dissertation is a study of the impact of federal legislative proposals considered between 1997 and 2004 that offer protection to databases. It investigates the effect that the proposals had on the balance between the economic interests of owners and the right of the public to unfettered access to information. This identified legislation…

The Federal Direct Student Loan Program offers loans to students and their parents to help pay for postsecondary education. Under current law, about $1.4 trillion in new direct loans will be made to students between 2013 and 2023, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects. Analysts and policymakers have raised concerns about various features…

Since the enactment of the "Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975" ("EHA"), Public Law (P.L.) 94-142 and its successor statute, the "Individuals with Disabilities Education Act" ("IDEA" or "act"), the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education (secretary) (and her predecessor, the…

Federal funding for early childhood education and care promotes three overarching policy goals: (1) increasing children's access to services; (2) raising the quality of early childhood programs; and (3) fostering greater coordination among the many providers--public schools, center-based child care, home-based child care, Head Start, and more--of…

At the turn of the century, the United States was trying to come to grips with a serious education crisis. The country was lagging behind its international peers, and a half-century effort to erode racial disparities in school achievement had made little headway. Many people expected action from the federal government. George W. Bush and Barack…

The use of crisis procedures, such as seclusion and physical restraint, in U.S. schools has garnered a great deal of national attention, resulting in reports from professional organizations, proposed legislation, and recent recommendations from the U.S. Department of Education (U.S. DOE; 2012). In this paper, we review the recommendations from the…

This election season, "Forward" was the watch-word of President Barack Obama's campaign. During the election battle, it stood for moving ahead with four more years of his leadership, and for the future-focused thinking the president espoused as a candidate. But what does "forward" mean for President Obama's second term in…

This report, based on a winter/spring 2013 survey of 40 Common Core State Standards-adopting states, examines state education agency (SEA) officials' views on the federal role in implementing the standards. The report finds that, although a direct federal role in implementing the Common Core State Standards has been controversial, a majority of…

While both the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and he U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) base their services and eligibility criteria on the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (hereafter referred to as "The McKinney-Vento Act"), each agency uses a different definition of "homeless" due to differences…

This spring, Congress is considering the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. In the 14 years since the law was passed, AEI Education has devoted extensive analysis to how it worked in practice. AEI has distilled their work into a series of brief chapters to provide a one-stop shop for understanding why the law was passed, what went…

During few times in America's history has leadership in education been more critical. Far too many communities continue to face the enduring impacts of systematic racism and generational poverty. The nation's schools have also been impacted by COVID-19 and, for many, the effects are staggering and could last for years. At the same time, as the…

Nationally, 28 percent of all public elementary and secondary schools were in rural locations in 2013-14, serving 18 percent of all K-12 students (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics 2015). Rural schools serve students in sparsely populated areas and have smaller overall populations than schools in other…

This article examines the historical relationship between political power and the pursuit of education and social equality from the Reconstruction era to the present. The chief argument is that education equality is historically linked to and even predicated on equal political power, specifically, equal access to the franchise and instruments of…

Recent changes in education and training policy in England continue to focus on creating a 'demand-led' system in an environment where public funds are dwindling and where more responsibility is being devolved away from central government. This raises questions about governance of the system, among others, and the roles that key system actors are…