Over the past few years, state legislators have proposed and enacted legislation that undermines youth rights and imposes education censorship. To discuss the impact on support-based mechanisms in schools, qualitative interviews (n = 11) and one focus group were conducted with school social workers. This study privileges practitioner wisdom to…

In this article, James Joshua Coleman and Jon Wargo interrogate the (queer) child as a concept and specter that haunts civic life in the United States. Whereas scholars across a range of fields and standpoints have questioned the value of LGBTQ+ inclusion in public school curricula, and society more broadly, together Coleman and Wargo wonder at…

We are feminist scholars who research and teach at a university in the United States situated within histories of sociopolitical conservativism and oppressions. In the present, looming over our classrooms, are mandates to eliminate 'divisive concepts' such as race and gender. These political monsters gnash their teeth and foam at the mouth as they…

Long before the Dobbs decision, abortion was a fraught topic in communication classes. Post-Dobbs, the disincentives to discussing abortion intensified as a slew of state legislative actions-imposed restrictions not only on abortion access, but also on anything that might be construed as support for abortion. The purpose with this essay is to…

In Germany, responsibility for early childhood education and care (ECEC) lies with the 16 federal states, which define the structures, financing and regulations concerning ECEC. Due to a subsidiary system, municipalities are not able to offer ECEC as long as private providers offer enough places. These providers employ a large variety of…

Evolving or stagnant immigration laws and policies may distinctly shape the experiences of undocumented students by shifting access to rights or opportunities. I draw upon 30 interviews with college students in California to analyze how they encountered legal vulnerability. I argue that legal vulnerability can be dismissed, dormant, or…

This study examined intervention fidelity (IF) and the extent to which this essential feature of response to intervention (RtI) was included within artifacts (laws and guidance documents) for states requiring RtI for specific learning disability (SLD) identification. Intervention fidelity is defined as the degree to which an intervention is…

As state legislatures increasingly turn their gaze to education and school policy, one intervention that is particularly concerning is the proposal to arm civilian school personnel. Under the guise of school safety, these policies suggest that allowing teachers, who often have little if any training, to carry weapons on school grounds may deter a…

Purpose: The unanticipated changes in state legislation in Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, and Wisconsin in 2011-12 significantly restricted or entirely prohibited the collective bargaining rights of teachers. Considering these institutional changes as a natural experiment, we examine the causal impact of weakening teacher unionization on…

Research on higher education policy in the United States often seeks to understand commonalities across state contexts to understand broader concepts influencing decision-making. However, this minimises the importance of abstract and distinct factors impacting policy processes within a state. While researchers in other fields attribute these…

What if, instead of viewing legislators as distant or indirect audiences for public writing, we shifted to engage them as community partners, collaborating in a mutually beneficial relationship to develop fresh policy ideas from voices that are often missing in lawmaking? This article tells the story of a partnership between a college composition…

While we continue to see a growing push for the restoration and codification of recess in elementary schools, policy does not necessarily equal practice. Georgia recently passed legislation requiring at least 20 minutes of recess per day for students in PK-5. The purpose of this research study was to survey elementary school educators to reveal…

Research on firearm purchaser licensing laws has found population level reductions in firearm-related mortality. Limited research has been conducted specifically examining the impact of these laws among adolescents and emerging adults. We obtained death data from the National Center for Health Statistics from 1990 to 2019. We generated state-year…

The implementation of equity-oriented reforms is never simply a technical matter: it involves directly engaging with the norms and politics responsible for reproducing inequitable opportunities and outcomes, and with efforts to promote educational justice. To date, there has been little research on how leaders in science education navigate the…

Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is a public health issue that affected more than 2% of live births in Kentucky in 2017. We analyzed data from Kentucky's early intervention (EI) program and the mandatory statewide NAS registry to learn more about how families of children with NAS utilize EI services. Out of 1,113 children in the study, 32% were…