Drawing on longitudinal data of state K--12 education policymaker demographics, we examine education policymaking body diversity over time, and across states and institutional structures. Though dominated by white businessmen, females and professional educators increased their presence at the education policymaking table. There was little movement…

Among the top reasons public school superintendents leave their positions is the poor relationships and conflicts with board members, and union representatives (Grissom & Mitani, 2016). The national average of superintendent tenure is less than four years resulting in K-12 leadership instability, at all levels of the school and district office…

The paper examines school meetings held in a small democratic school in Poland in order to explore how school communities are formed. Drawing on Foucault's concept of power, the authors analyse fieldnotes and interview excerpts to reveal how voice and scripted bodily expressions accompanying verbal utterances are privileged in these school…

In this article, we examine how school district leaders bolster white supremacy by deploying white innocence, a discourse in which individuals or entities project a positive image of themselves while deflecting blame for racism. We focus on a school district that was the site of strategic and sustained advocacy from Black community members and…

The introduction of school governing bodies in South African schools has largely been motivated by a democratic discourse of communal participation, belonging and accountability. How this has been interpreted has seemingly been limited to understandings of parental participation in the daily functioning of schools. In turn, research on school…

This paper draws from a critical race multicase study of Black parents' school engagement experiences in a liberal U.S. public school district, focusing here on 12 mothers and fathers who participated in Parent Teacher Organizations (PTOs) and/or African American parent groups. I apply Critical Race Theory, particularly Crenshaw's notions of…

Charter schools because of their entanglements with privatization remain one of the most publicly contested and controversial educational reform initiatives. Charter schools, in theory, are to balance autonomy and accountability in order to provide students with innovative learning environments and increased achievement on traditional academic…

In this paper, we analyse the trajectory of the French testing policy in education since 1973. Regarding its statistical tradition and its ability to produce its own evaluation tool, France may be regarded as an interesting case to interrogate the capacity of national educational systems to meet international standards of testing. Anchored in a…

The aim of the research is to examine power-center forming games behaviors of the school principals according to view of the teachers. In the research a mixed type was preferred and descriptive sequential pattern was used. The population of the research has consisted of teachers working in kindergarten, primary schools, middle schools and high…

In this essay, Jack Schneider and Andrew Saultz offer a new perspective on state and federal power through their analysis of authority and control. Due to limitations inherent to centralized governance, state and federal offices of education exercised little control over schools across much of the twentieth century, even as they acquired…

In this paper, we theorize on local school governance through a multi-method case study of a large-sized Swedish municipality by drawing on neo-institutional theory. In light of a changing governing landscape in Sweden in terms of a 're-centralization', new conditions between the state, the local education authorities (LEA) and the schools have…

This article discusses how the call for families' active participation in school can be understood as a form of regulatory act producing neoliberal subjectivities based on responsibility, entrepreneurship and rational calculation. The analysis draws on the results of two projects aiming to improve the relationship between families of Spanish Roma…

This paper interrogates the relationship between South Africa's most important piece of educational policy, the South African Schools Act (SASA) (Republic of South Africa, 1996b), and learner identity. It seeks to understand how this central piece of South African educational legislation foreshadows, intersects with, foregrounds, prescribes and/or…

Discussions about trauma-informed schools have rapidly increased in North America, yet there is a dearth of literature on the role of the teacher in these interventions. Studies largely fail to address the needs of racialized and lower SES students who are disproportionately more likely to experience single event and chronic trauma events, but are…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has generated considerable buzz in education circles and the general media. But how much has really changed, and what does this mean for states as they begin the process of implementing a new federal education law? In this article, we apply principal-agent theory to explore intergovernmental relations under…