Over the past three decades, tax-credit scholarship (TCS) policies have helped hundreds of thousands of American families provide their children with the learning environment that meets their individual needs. Until recently, TCS policies were the most-used form of private school choice. Now available in 21 states, more than 330,000 students…

Several state boards of education have adopted graduate profiles or portraits to better define the skills and knowledge students should master before they graduate high school. This report discusses the graduate profiles developed by the following states: South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, and Washington. While their entry points and approaches to…

This article explores introduced tenure bans, meaning state-level legislation proposing eliminating tenure protections within all or part of a public higher education system. We describe such bills 2012-2022 and explore state-level political, economic, social, and higher education conditions associated with introducing a tenure ban. Tenure bans…

Opponents of education choice recycle the same false prophesies of doom without regard to the evidence or the size and scope of the proposals. For decades, the most common objection to education choice policies has been that they will "destroy public education." According to the critics, choice policies will induce the parents most…

School leaders, specifically principals, play a pivotal role in shaping student learning outcomes. The benefits of strong leaders extend beyond academic achievement, such as reductions in absenteeism and exclusionary discipline. While quality principals are critical for creating and sustaining quality schools, the staffing pipeline is facing…

Situated against teacher demand problems worldwide, rising teacher turnover and declining teacher education enrollment have rendered the state of South Carolina a region commonly described as facing a "teacher shortage crisis." This paper reports results from an evaluation of the Rural Recruitment Initiative (RRI), a state-level teacher…

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is now more than twenty years beyond its inception when it was built on the concept that digital materials make learning content easy to reuse and share. This report discusses current legislative trends in OER and offers recommended OER practices for states.

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, increasing attention has been paid to rural communities. For our study, we used a multicase study approach that included five states to study the difference between the rhetoric about the need to focus more attention on rural communities soon after the 2016 election and the practiced reality of state…

How do literacy coaches function as policy actors? Using a case study of literacy coaches in a small, rural South Carolina school district, this dissertation explored the ways coaches act as policy actors, the policies coaches create, and how they institutionalize policy. This study focused on literacy coaches as policy actors. The South Carolina…

Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) offer parents a publicly funded, government-authorized savings account they can draw on for certain K-12 educational expenses. As these programs have expanded in recent years, they have become a flashpoint in education policy debates. For some, ESAs are an extension of existing private school choice programs'…

This sequential explanatory mixed methods study examines the impact of the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) professional learning intervention on teacher knowledge within the context of South Carolina's reading policy. Quantitative analyses of pre- and post-assessment data indicate significant improvements in…

Though great focus has been placed on DACA on the national level, many of the actual experiences of Dreamers in regard to education and employment licensure depend on state policies. South Carolina is one of the most restrictive states in regard to rights for DACA recipients. In light of these realities, this mixed-methods study examines the views…

For more than two decades, tax-credit scholarship (TCS) policies have helped American families provide their children with the learning environment that meets their individual needs. Now available in 19 states, nearly 300,000 students nationwide use tax-credit scholarships to attend the school of their family's choice. TCS policies create an…

States must adopt an equity-focused approach to transfer policies to address racial equity gaps and make progress toward attainment goals in postsecondary education. State higher education agencies should assess transfer performance based on race and income and establish standards for creating equitable transfer policies. To support state and…

In the U.S., state guidance to schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was politicized. We used state-level political affiliation to explore whether access to curricular resources differed pre-pandemic or during pandemic remote teaching and teachers' reported control over curricular resources during pandemic teaching. We found that…