Prior research documented disproportional representation across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines within the population of students identified as gifted and talented (GT). Less research has focused on what predicts improved representation for English learners (ELs) or students with disabilities (SwDs), or how state GT policies facilitate…

Performance-based funding (PBF) policies with research incentives have grown in popularity over the years despite little understanding regarding whether they actually work. This study leverages a novel national data set to examine the impact of PBF research incentives on the research expenditures and total state appropriations among public 4-year…

Federal law defines English learner (EL) eligibility differently for Indigenous, compared to non-Indigenous, students, allowing for broader entry into the EL category, along with its accompanying resources and services. We interviewed EL leaders from 25 state departments of education to learn about their level of understanding of the…

Many states and school districts are implementing reforms to reduce reliance on exclusionary discipline such as out-of-school suspension and expulsion. This article uses survey and administrative data to study the implementation of a state-level policy limiting elementary school out-of-school suspension and expulsions. While the results are…

Almost every state in the United States has revamped its principal evaluation policies since 2009, yet we know little about how they are implemented. Based on interviews and document analysis in 21 small- and medium-sized school districts, we found that superintendents' sensemaking shaped their implementation of policy. Drawing on their beliefs…

Despite considerable growth in rates of participation in recent years, concerns remain about disparities in access to dual enrollment programs. On one hand, there are questions regarding who has access, which students are most disadvantaged, and which schools fail to offer the opportunity at all? On the other hand, there has been little clarity…

States and broad-access colleges are rapidly scaling corequisite coursework--a model where students concurrently enroll in college-level and developmental coursework--in response to dismal completion rates in traditional "developmental" sequences. At community colleges, evidence suggests that corequisite reforms can dramatically improve…

State policymakers wrestle with long-standing questions and concerns about how to best provide additional fiscal support to rural school districts to ensure their students have access to adequate educational opportunities. In this study, we describe how one state developed empirically based estimates for the additional cost of operating rural…

Educators have sought to understand and address the disproportional representation of students from certain student subgroups in gifted education. Most gifted identification decisions are made with national comparisons where students must score above a certain percentage of test takers. However, this approach is not always consistent with the…

Reverse credit transfer (RCT) is an emerging policy designed to award associate's degrees to students who transfer from 2-year to 4-year colleges after transfer. The purpose of this study is to estimate the impact of RCT degree receipt on students' university and labor outcomes using data from Texas, where the legislature passed RCT policy in…

Currently, the state of California has dedicated much focus to reducing absenteeism in schools through the In School + On Track initiative, which revitalizes efforts made to keep accurate and informative attendance data. Additionally, absenteeism has been integrated into California's Local Control and Accountability Plan to monitor district…

As racialized institutions, Hispanic-serving institutions educate large portions of racially minoritized students within organizational and policy structures that advance Whiteness. This research considers how the institution-level diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plans, produced in response to state-level DEI policies in Florida,…

As state governments seek to improve the performance of institutions of K-12 and higher education, they often adopt educational policies that have similar names but different characteristics across states and with variations over time within states. Yet quantitative analyses generally examine the absence or presence of an educational policy…

Using state-representative teacher surveys in three states--Texas, Ohio, and Kentucky--we examine teachers' implementation of college- and career-readiness (CCR) standards. What do teachers report about the specificity, authority, consistency, power, and stability of their standards environment? How does their policy environment predict…