We employ a policy assemblage, mobilities, and mutations framework to analyze the geographies that constitute and reflect educational policy circulation at the regional or supranational level in trans-regional regimes and/or quasi-federal polities such as the European Union (EU) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Recognizing that policies are…

In conjunction with the 30th anniversary of the open access scholarly journal, "Education Policy Analysis Archives," Founder and Editor Emeritus Gene V Glass presents a brief history of the journal, including its online predecessors and offshoots, within the context of computer and information technology developments and the early open…

This contribution takes up and discusses topology as a relational approach to better understand and empirically trace policy mobilities in federal education systems. While topology echoes other relational approaches in its simultaneous focus on ongoing change and the "making" of stabilized forms (e.g., policy scales), it also brings…

This study explored how 14 higher education and student affairs (HESA) professionals navigated institutional policy vacuums to address interpersonal racial conflict between students. Grounded in perspectives of policy vacuums, findings revealed that HESA professionals learned about racial conflict by referring to their own personal, professional,…

This study aims to illustrate how states include an improvement science approach to educational improvement in their Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) state plan. Through a qualitative content analysis of 52 state ESSA plans, we propose an introductory organizational typology to categorize states based on their explicit inclusion of improvement…

Antiblackness is a persistent feature of American society with continued implications for the experiences, outcomes, and well-being of Black communities. In the wake of widespread protests against antiblack police brutality and heightened awareness of racial injustices in 2020, federal, state, and local political actors swiftly began a concerted…

This paper presents an overview of critical policy scholarship (CPS) in education. Historically, policy research has been dominated by what is commonly referred to as the policy science tradition, which is positivist in its philosophical stance and instrumentalist in its purpose--it focuses on producing knowledge relevant for policy decisions.…

Education reform in the United States has unwisely focused attention on standards and accountability to the state as determined by standardized testing (Berliner & Biddle, 1995; Mehta, 2013). Stemming from the emphasis on standards-based accountability are the ideas of rapid school "turnaround" and the state's role in this process…

Educational policies designed to benefit students from first-generation, low-income, and racially minoritized backgrounds do not always consider the realities these students experience during college. Instead, students participating in compensatory education programs can endure further marginalization. Using critical policy analysis' core tenets…

This article examines the adoption and abandonment of the Missouri Pre-Service Teacher Assessment (MoPTA). Our analysis draws on policy network theory to argue that the divergent rationales of Missouri's primary teacher education policy network actors led to confusion, conflict, and disagreement, which contributed to the abandonment of the MoPTA…

School communities across the United States are experiencing increasing calls to remove the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) from their curricula despite not actually doing so in practice. This anti-CRT push is part of a larger, conservative agenda to ban teaching "divisive" topics in public schools and exemplifies the underlying…

School choice policies have become a prominent feature of K-12 education in recent decades, reflecting the broader institutionalization of market-based political ideology in education. In this qualitative multiple case study, we draw on framing theory and interviews with 57 state-level education policy actors to explore the nature of the continued…

As resegregation occurs across the country, some school districts are pursuing voluntary integration. This qualitative case study uses critical policy analysis to explore the political and social contexts surrounding the early stages of developing a voluntary integration plan in Wake County Public School System, North Carolina. Through analysis of…

Global policy mobilities have been studied predominantly at the national level of education, but their implications and effects at the subnational level have been disregarded. This paper analyzes Proyectá tu Futuro, the first social impact bond (SIB) for education and employability implemented in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since 2010, SIBs have…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many United States brick-and-mortar schools in Spring 2020 rapidly transitioned to emergency remote learning. School leaders grappled with how grades ought to fit within the many unknowns of K-12 remote education. In some cases, schools modified their grading scales to give students greater flexibility to pass…