"¡Juntos Podemos!"/Together We Can! is a multigenerational, districtwide collective of educators, community organizers, and activists. Located in eastern Los Angeles County, the group developed intentionally and horizontally to address the disenfranchisement of the working-class communities of La Puente and Valinda using the California…

Due to advances in medical treatments, students with terminal illnesses are more likely to attend public schools, increasing the possibility that they may die on school property. However, educational health plans often fail to consider end-of-life care decisions. In the absence of federal or state statutes, school boards are left to navigate the…

The impact of the pandemic and the political climate positioned school boards to advocate and leverage support and resources to inform and influence state education policy targeting the opportunity gap. This study assessed school board members' engagement levels with education policy and determined individual, institutional, and contextual factors…

Through rising chronic absenteeism, increases in behavioral challenges, and declines in college enrollment after high school, many students are signaling that school is no longer a place they can or want to be. To address this problem, high schools across the country are consolidating disparate student support efforts into a unified approach led…

Background: What is the role of state legislatures in improving public education? Is it to provide funding and standards for student outcomes and then step aside? Or should legislatures and state education agencies also govern how districts educate students? In practice, states hold school districts accountable for academic achievement while also…

Neoliberal discourse dominated education policy for decades and fueled reform movements with lasting effects. Through a critical lens this qualitative case study explored policy direction, the influences that shaped multiple years of reform initiatives and the impact of these changes in one Canadian province. Data sources including policy…

The Region 12 Comprehensive Center supports the Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) with implementation and scaling of the Kansans Can Redesign Initiative. Schools engaged in redesign are guided by four core principles--personalized learning, student success skills, family/business/community partnerships, and real-world application--to…

Schools seeking to develop students' social, emotional, and academic skills should consider service learning as one way to help students apply those skills. As of the 2017-18 school year, 37 states and the District of Columbia required or encouraged school districts to offer community service education and service-learning programs. This NASBE…

School boards have a central position in educational governance. They have to guarantee quality, monitor results and intervene if needed. In this article we report the results of a systematic literature review meant to identify what school boards do to contribute to educational quality. After five steps of literature selection and refinement, our…

This article examines the long-overlooked governmental body, the local community college governing board, through the lens of descriptive representation, to assess what variables are associated with minority representation. Higher education governing boards have long lacked diversity, let alone any type of proportional representation, but an…

School-based mental health professionals, including school psychologists, counselors, and social workers are critical to appropriate mental health services to youth in schools. However, the vast majority of states are chronically underserved by these professionals, despite policies that attempt to rectify the shortages. In this paper, we document…

The Title I and Title II-A programs of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provide funds meant to help schools and districts better serve low-income students and improve teacher and principal quality. The law's latest update, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), was passed in 2015 and provides more flexibility to states on some…

All students have the right to be safe at school. Regulations mandate that schools must establish procedures to ensure the safety of all students during emergency situations. Twenty years ago, a Midwestern school district created Individualized Emergency Evacuation Plans (IEEPs) to address unique safety needs of students with disabilities. A mixed…

Black community members often express frustrations with engagement within school board meetings through continuous advocacy for systemic change. While scholarship has identified the racial tensions between Black community members and school board members, few studies have explored how school board meeting spaces and their practices influence Black…

For decades, Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) has blatantly disregarded and ostracized Black caregivers and community members who have attempted to address concerns about the educational experience of Black students. The only moderately successful strategy was political activism led by Dr. Barbara Sizemore in the 1970s to secure a board majority,…