The case for ethnic studies is multipronged. It begins with the material itself: history and literature about the struggles and triumphs of people whose voices often have been omitted from traditional texts and classroom readings. A second layer of argument stresses the need for students to understand and discuss how various racial and ethnic…

The Consider Teachers Act of 2021 was put in place to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 in order to improve the service obligation verification process for TEACH Grant recipients, and for other purposes. The Act includes the following sections: (1) Short Title; (2) Teach Grants; (3) Submission of Employment Certification; (4) Extension of…

On July 24, 2023, the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) of the U.S. Department of Education (US ED) released a Dear Colleague letter (DCL) and lengthy guidance related to the responsibilities states have to oversee the education of students with disabilities in their schools and to ensure that those students are afforded all of their…

"¡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…

This article investigates how professional development courses for university teachers are viewed by different stakeholders, specifically students, university teachers, central university management, and the government. The particular focus of the investigation is on the relationship of theory and practice, disciplinary content, and forms of…

America's schools are more segregated today than they were three decades ago. After initial progress in the wake of the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education"--further bolstered by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as by several other rulings by the court--the nation's schools began a process of resegregation in…

Statewide assessments in reading and math are required every year under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, at an annual expense of billions of taxpayer dollars. Analyzing 10 years of school-level results from public schools in two states-- Nebraska and Texas--we found that year-to-year correlations of schools' test scores were…

The need for teachers who have both the knowledge and skills to teach students in special education, especially students who are emergent bilinguals, is more critical today than ever before. Assumptions about the assurances outlined in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) have led to practices that have limited the scope of…

The Federal Pell Grant program, authorized by Title IV-A-1 of the Higher Education Act of 1965, (HEA; P.L. 89-329), as amended, is the single largest source of federal grant aid supporting undergraduate students. The program provided approximately $26 billion in aid to approximately 6.1 million undergraduate students in FY2021. Pell Grants are…

For far too long in California, remedial courses in California Community Colleges meant costly barriers to student success. Fortunately, recent legislation -- Assembly Bill 705 signed into law in 2017 -- requires these colleges to eliminate remedial courses and instead use research-backed strategies like corequisite support to help students…

Title 1 principals face many day-to-day challenges due to the complexity and demands of their jobs. Research has found (Levin et al., 2019) that principals valued professional development (PD) more if it allowed them to address their school's specific needs and circumstances and increase their leadership capacity. This research aims to explore the…

As the current number of special education students continues to increase throughout the United States, so does the number of students who currently identify as Latinx. With this increase, it is important to consider what the experiences are for these students' families as they learn that their children qualify for special education services as…

Students designated as English learners (ELs) make up a substantial and growing portion of the K-12 population in the U.S., so all teachers should expect, at some point, to be teachers of language learners and will need to address the complexities of managing a multilingual classroom. This management is considered classroom-level educational…

Due to COVID-19 lockdowns, Arkansas had to implement virtual instruction into a face-to-face education system for the first time in the 2020-2021 school year. This unique situation is the setting for this dissertation. It explores how adding virtual education to face-to-face education affected student engagement as measured by student attendance.…

Limited research had been conducted on the role extracurricular activities had on school culture. Even less was dedicated to how middle school educators perceived how extracurricular activities influenced school culture. Due to the lack of overall research, further research was necessary to develop a better understanding of the influence of…