The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Combatting Classroom Censorship." Contents include: (1) A Wolf in Sheep's…

State education finance sets the stage for what is possible in schools. Too many state education finance systems today are inequitable, outdated, and inadequate, and there are often significant political barriers to change. Advocates for educational equity can and should play an essential role in shaping the allocation and structure of state…

ScaleLIT encountered unique challenges surrounding equity and inclusion due to changes brought about by COVID-19. Our position as a coalition that supports a variety of local, state, and national initiatives makes us a key player in the integration of leading with learning, not with technology; the implementation of Navigators and One Stop…

Controversy is intensifying with the rapid spread of charter schools and their domination of the education reform agenda. As charter enrolment increases in the USA, inequities in education worsen. This article contributes to the debate on contemporary education policy by critically examining charter issues from the US literature and stakeholder…

The need for schools to produce graduates ready to meet increasing workforce demands and postsecondary admission requirements has called for more individualized career and academic planning with high school students. School counselors have a unique yet complex role in providing college and career guidance, monitoring, and opportunities. This study…

The Council for Exceptional Children studied the profession of special education and found that a substantial number of special educators rated their confidence as lower in culturally responsive instruction strategies (Fowler, et al., 2019). The recommendations in this article highlight how to confront the intersection of racism and ableism and…

The purpose of this narrative paper is to provide a reflective description of the formation, structure, and work of a diverse coalition dedicated to collaboratively informing educational policy advocacy in California. Specifically, this article offers an example of how community members from across settings mobilized into collective action to…

This piece illustrates some of the practices/discourses enacted by four displaced Puerto Rican mothers as they strived to support the academic success of their children in the receiving Pennsylvania public school system. The study, couched in Critical Pedagogy and Community Cultural Wealth (CCW), documents (a) the ways mothers supported and…

The recent calls to desegregate New York City's public schools reify the fact that equity, social justice, and access to meaningful schooling continue to be a significant problem for Black and Hispanic children and their families, especially those who reside in urban communities. In this historiography I utilise a Black feminist perspective to…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Fair & Effective Education Policy." Contents include: (1) Community…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand how superintendents leading large, high-profile and politically complex urban districts make sense of their district-community context and advocate for issues of equity. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative multi-case study took place over the 2017-18 school year and involved…

Throughout education history, inequities have evolved in our public schools. History has attested to numerous injustices, such as segregation, unequal funding, undifferentiated teaching of English learners, within our school systems. The rise of a pandemic revealed how layered and problematic these injustices were entrenched in our public school…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Policy Priorities." Contents include: (1) IDRA Kicks Off 50th Anniversary…

The aim of this article is to explore the influence of private foundation funding on arts policy and practice in two large, urban school districts: Boston Public Schools and Baltimore City Schools. Both school systems experienced declining enrollments and graduation rates, and in an era of high stakes testing and accountability, schools in both…

Drawing from oral history interviews and archival data from a nine-month ethnography, this article examines the activist practices of foundational bilingual teachers in Milwaukee's movement to launch Spanish/English bilingual-bicultural education (BBE). We use theories of critical consciousness to interpret the educators' daily activism as crucial…