The term 'inclusive education' has evolved to connote various meanings and recently, neoliberalism has impacted how 'inclusion' is understood and enacted. In this paper, we use a disability studies in education framework to compare and contrast radical against incrementalist and reductionist approaches to educational reform related to students…

This study shows findings of an investigation into the forms of institutionalizing academic rankings as accountability tools for Brazilian public universities. The absence of institutional conditions which allowed the rise of these league tables in other countries - competitive admission markets and incorporation into public policies - evinces the…

Passed in 2001, the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) codified the use of educational accountability systems that rely on largely quantitative measures -- standardized tests, especially -- to assess student learning outcomes, rank order districts and schools according to these outcomes, and prescribe sanctions for schools and districts not…

This study aimed to unravel the complex dynamics among accountability, school climate, and teachers' organizational identity perceptions in three different types of schools: elementary, middle, and high schools. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to examine the relationships among accountability, school climate, and teachers'…

The accountability era has produced school grading systems that purport to evaluate school effectiveness yet utilize hegemonic formulas that label low-scoring schools and neighborhoods, depriving them of incentive monies tied to their school grades. This quantitative study analyzed the publicly available data of 106 elementary schools in one large…

A narrative study was used to examine the lived experiences of novice teachers and their knowledge base of culturally responsive pedagogy and its implementation in the classroom. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews of 12 participants who completed a teacher preparation program. Through coding analysis, data was analyzed around…

What kinds of validity evidence can the University of Kansas Sense of Belonging Test (KU-SBT) provide? Through the operationalization of a construct, this study intends to build an initial validity argument for the KU-SBT to determine exchange graduate students' manifestations of internal and external sense of belonging, which may play a role in…

Performance funding policies are politically popular, however research on performance funding has shown that these policies are ineffective and can have unintended negative consequences, particularly for lower-resourced institutions and underserved students. The purpose of this study was to determine if the Montana University System performance…

Racism, social media, and free speech collide on a high school campus when a student creates an offensive poster that a classmate posts on social media. This case describes a school administrator's conversations and actions with students, teachers, and the community addressing bigotry, race, and free speech on campus. The scenario is presented…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the relationship between teacher's perceptions of school climate and student achievement of middle school students. Two hundred twenty middle school teachers, from a large urban school district located in the Southwestern region of the US, participated in the "New Jersey School Climate…

Champion Academy teachers in this mixed methods action research case study illuminate the conditions which support or hinder the process of making collective commitments with "cycles for iterative improvement." The results of the study demonstrate how closely connected process is to outcome in the work of school improvement. Since the…

This qualitative study explores teacher enactment of education policy, specifically Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), in a large suburban Midwestern high school. Participating educators constructed policy meaning while they sought to understand it, over a multi-year rollout process. Data were gathered using five teacher and…

Monitoring chronic absence by grade, student populations, school, district, and geography is crucial to learning recovery and addressing the inequities exacerbated by the pandemic. Chronic absence and other types of attendance data can help identify where more engagement and support are needed as well as illuminate policies and practices that are…

This study draws on a comprehensive performance-based funding (PBF) dataset and up-to-date difference-in-differences econometrics to examine the impacts of specific policy features (e.g., share of institutional revenue at stake and equity metrics) on college access and selectivity. We find suggestive evidence that increases in the share of revenue…

Midlevel leaders are key players in institutional change, yet many often feel disconnected from the framing and execution of academic strategy. Actively engaging midlevel leaders in the institutional strategic planning process creates an opportunity for professional development and accountability for the success of the strategic plan.