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…

This policy brief estimates the fiscal impacts of expanding New Hampshire's Education Freedom Account (EFA) program under two bills that were introduced in the state Legislature during the 2025 session. The analysis covers the first two years of each plan. The EFA program is currently open to public and private school K-12 students whose family…

Tennessee passed voucher-style Education Savings Account (ESA) legislation in 2019. We analyze the roll call vote in the Tennessee House to better understand the role of constituent, legislator, and special interest influences on support for school choice. This is accomplished using a binary probit model with legislator vote as the dependent…

In recent years, a scientific approach to reading education has gained traction due to the joint efforts of educators, parents, and state leaders. This movement for better reading instruction has helped to fuel a wave of legislation to address widespread and persistent reading deficits of American students. While reading difficulties cut across…

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…

We examined how legalization of Sunday alcohol sales relates to attitudes towards Sunday sales, and how both attitudes and alcohol consumption patterns relate to Sunday alcohol purchasing. A total of 1,384 adults of legal drinking age completed a survey one year post-legalization of Sunday sales. A majority of respondents (51%) were supportive of…

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…

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…

Emerging literature on anti-CRT, anti-DEI efforts in education suggest that these attacks represent a rearticulation of racial ideologies which seek to contain racial progress. Although crafting anti-CRT and anti-DEI policies is primarily conducted through discourse, few studies explore the specific discursive mechanisms used to justify these…

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…

The Arizona state legislature has aimed to pass a series of bills banning those in schools from teaching topics associated with inclusion, social justice, and equity. Since 2020, the legislature has targeted teaching 'critical race theory' (CRT), often (mis)using the term to refer to any ideas related to systemic discrimination and racial…

Background: Understanding how policymakers define research and differentiate it from other sources of data is critical for scientists to improve how they conduct and communicate research to policy audiences. Yet, few studies have explicitly asked policymakers -- particularly state legislators in the USA -- how they define research evidence.…