In this paper, I ask: How can thinking with posthuman theories of affect in gender and education enable us to trouble current book banning efforts that work to reassert the gender order, namely by aligning heterosexuality with the notion of a 'core national culture'? And how do post[left right arrow]feminisms, as more-than-human political…

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…

School desegregation efforts often spark fierce political backlash. This dissent is typically ascribed to families' dissatisfaction with the changes in schooling assignments required to achieve desegregation aims. In this paper we use the empirical context of the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) to estimate the effect of diversity-driven…

While the use of generative AI (genAI) in K12 schools is increasing, it is poorly understood from a policy perspective. There are significant tensions in technology integration in education between public interests for social good and pressure from educational technology companies to view schools as markets. This study examined genAI policy…

What would it take to truly close the vast opportunity gaps in pre-K-12 public education in the United States--far beyond the weak standard in common use of "adequacy" based on test scores? This report presents findings from the North Carolina part of a national costing-out study called the "Price of Opportunity," which seeks…

Wisconsin voters approved a record number of referenda in 2024 to increase property taxes to fund their local schools, and nearly set a record for the most referenda to fund municipalities or counties. However, the approval rate for school ballot questions continued a downward trend. These trends raise questions about both the adequacy of current…

In recent literature, K-12 public schooling is cited as a driver of a post-truth phenomenon referred to as truth decay. Truth decay is attributed as contributing to the rise of post-factual politics and the deterioration of civil discourse in the United States. The rise of post-factual politics and the deterioration of civil discourse is perceived…

This qualitative study sought stakeholder perspectives on the Kansas Department of Education's "Kansas Can" school redesign initiatives. Interviews with stakeholders revealed both sustainable and vulnerable aspects of the school reforms across cultural, political, and technological dimensions.

The improvement of low-performing school systems is one potential strategy for mitigating educational inequality. Some evidence suggests districtwide reform may be more effective than school-level change, but limited research examines district-level turnaround. There is also little scholarship examining the effects of turnaround reforms on…

This study critically examines gender equality planning (GEP), which has been obligatory in all Finnish comprehensive schools since 2015. GEP has been welcomed as a promising method of systemizing perspectives on gender in Finnish basic education. A regionally representative, discretional sample of gender equality plans (N = 140) was analysed…

Those working toward equitable K-12 computing education in the United States have always had their work cut out for them: understanding how best to teach, developing robust curricula, designing novel tools, building teacher capacity, and supporting systemic change in schools to bring equitable computing education to young people. Collectively,…

In this article, we explore and discuss how the clustering of values in local educational governance manifests in the case of inclusion. Public values and the role that these play as mediating factors are important in local governance processes; however, they are often overlooked in empirical studies. Inclusion is interesting because it is…

Access to good quality comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), while a fundamental right, is not provided everywhere. In Japan, children lack knowledge and skills relevant to their sexual and reproductive health and rights as CSE is not mandatory. Moreover, because of political intervention, the existing curriculum is insufficient, and teachers…

Conflict over the curriculum is nothing new in American public education, which has never been insulated from the culture wars. In the past few years, conflict over the teaching of race has torn through history and social studies classrooms, inciting the most serious fight over America's past since the last "history war" in the 1990s. At…

This paper offers a unique comparative study on primary and secondary education in opposition-held and regime-held Syrian schools since the beginning of the conflict in 2011. Doing so, it seeks to investigate whether and how education upholds visions of peace and conflict in the country. Building on schoolbook content analysis, semi-structured…