State-level postsecondary education governance has experienced a lull in successful reform efforts since the turn of the century. However, in 2020, the Utah System of Higher Education and Utah System of Technical Colleges were formally merged following a multi-year effort by state legislators and higher education officials. Framed by the theory of…

We draw on several critical paradigms, disciplines, and theories to interrogate 13 anti-LGBTQ+ educational policy texts. Using Institutional Theory (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2010; Carpenter & Feroz, 2001) and Poststructural Policy Analysis (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016), we explore how these texts may cause separations between policy and…

Accountability efforts under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has brought greater attention to school-level processes and practices and their impact on student outcomes. This has pushed states to report more school-level inputs, including per-pupil expenditures. Grounded in an open systems theory (OST) framework, we identify the association…

In this introduction, we outline the scholarly context and research questions that motivate this special issue: In what ways do racialized constructions of school quality open up or foreclose educational opportunity? How do understandings of school quality differ across local social, political, and demographic contexts? And lastly, at what points…

For decades, policymakers in the U.S. have leveraged accountability policy as a governing tool to lift school performance and close the achievement gap. Accountability become so widespread that it arguably became a "policy paradigm" with the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2002. Yet after just 13 years of…

In this theoretical article we present our hypothesis on the incompatibility of the inclusive education policy toward students with special educational needs with the meritocratic principle of education. If considering and recognizing the needs of these students is necessary to achieve a successful inclusive environment, we propose that this goal…

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…

This qualitative study examines the experiences of student leaders working in partnership with teacher leaders to implement Vermont's Act 77, a state mandated personalized learning policy. Drawing on a theoretical framework that connects the zones of mediation and knowledge brokering research, this study explores the question: How do youth and…

Full-service community schools are increasingly adopted as educational policy nationwide to transform educational institutions into community hubs, addressing racial and social disparities and countering deficit narratives related to marginalized youth and families. As the movement toward community schooling as an educational policy gains…

Many U.S. school districts now rely on instructional coaching to promote reform. Yet facets of coaching policy remain vague, and there is considerable variation in the structures and practices of coaching. We use longitudinal, qualitative data to analyze changes in instructional coaching, as a capacity building policy instrument, in one mid-sized…

Using a panel dataset from 2000 to 2014, this paper employs a difference-in-difference design to consider the impact of the introduction of a "promise program" on postsecondary institutions' internal spending levels and patterns. We find that promise programs influence postsecondary institutional behavior in every area we tested:…

The intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-Black violence prompted talk of racial reckoning among educational grantmakers in 2020 to 2021. This study examines the nature and extent of this reckoning, offering insights into policy actors' responses to racialized crises. Through an analysis of grantmakers' professed policy…

School-choice policies are expected to generate healthy competition between schools, leading to improvements in school quality and better outcomes for students. However, the empirical literature testing this assumption yields mixed findings. This systematic review and meta-analysis tests this theory by synthesizing the empirical literature on the…

This paper centers the voices of students who successfully struggled alongside justice-minded school board members and other concerned citizens to create anti-racist policy changes in Alexandria City Public Schools, Virginia. Specifically, we examine the history behind, and political processes involved with, changing the names of two local schools…

This interview-based study examines how justice-oriented K-12 administrators and teachers in Iowa make sense of the recent state-level education policy, H.F. 802. Synthesizing literature on Critical Policy Analysis and epistemic justice, we introduce Critical Epistemic Policy Analysis to understand the micro-level impact of divisive education…