This study takes advantage of natural variation in alignment and accountability to analyze educator sensemaking of a complex policy environment. It describes how educators in two large, high-accountability districts in New York and Florida made sense of multiple policy changes, including new standards, curriculum, assessments, and teacher…

The transition to new assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards was a significant turning point in the standards' implementation. Concerns about the transition led districts to suspend the use of value-added scores for evaluating teachers, but changes to other measures, such as classroom observations, were rare. Using data from the…

Postsecondary education and career training is increasingly important, with growing polarization of the labor market and forecasts for increasingly skilled workers to meet the needs of the US economy, particularly in California. Additionally, gaps between various student groups in educational access and attainment continue to persist despite…

With the adoption of such initiatives as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and the College and Career Readiness Performance Index (CCRPI), there is increasing pressure for students to meet and exceed performance expectations. This is easier said than done, especially given that not all organizational structures are…

Many are concerned about the large decline in K-12 student achievement since 2019. And rightly so, given what it signals about student learning and later life outcomes. Less noted is the pre-pandemic sustained decline in student achievement growth that followed 30 years of increases. We examine the nature of achievement decline as measured by…

Pushback against the perceived federal overreach into educational reform has led to renewed calls for a return to local control of schools. In contrast to this general trend, there has continued to be a strong national role for English learner (EL) accountability policies related to EL identification, monitoring and reclassification processes. In…

Background/Context: Social scientists, policymakers, and commentators have long assumed that Western democracies enjoy relative stability because of deep commitments to a culture of democratic governance. But those commitments are quickly fading in almost every developed and developing democracy around the globe. In the same period in which…