Many public higher education institutions throughout the United States are experiencing drastic shifts related to their services for underrepresented and at-risk student populations. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts have been at the American forefront since as early as the 1950s-1960s when the Civil Rights Movement first gained…

Public service reforms often provoke political backlash. Can they also yield political benefits for the politicians who champion them? We study a Wisconsin law that weakened teachers' unions and liberalized pay, prompting mass protests. Exploiting its staggered implementation across school districts, we find that the reform cut union revenues,…

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…

In this article, James Joshua Coleman and Jon Wargo interrogate the (queer) child as a concept and specter that haunts civic life in the United States. Whereas scholars across a range of fields and standpoints have questioned the value of LGBTQ+ inclusion in public school curricula, and society more broadly, together Coleman and Wargo wonder at…

We are feminist scholars who research and teach at a university in the United States situated within histories of sociopolitical conservativism and oppressions. In the present, looming over our classrooms, are mandates to eliminate 'divisive concepts' such as race and gender. These political monsters gnash their teeth and foam at the mouth as they…

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…

Provision of medication abortion in student health centers is safe and effective, but no public universities in Washington state provide such services. We estimate demand for medication abortion and describe barriers to care among students at four-year public universities in Washington. Using publicly available data, we estimated that students at…

Introduction: Child care is the primary environment in which many young children spend their time outside the family in Canada, and as such, plays an important role in supporting healthy movement behaviours. This population, including children with a disability, is consistently noted to attend child care and report lower rates of meeting movement…

Objective: Across the USA, state-level Bills have been introduced that curtail discussion about gender, sexuality, and biology in public schools. Specifically, two Bills have recently been passed in the states of Florida and Texas that we engage with here as we think through the following questions: what ideologies related to bodies and sexuality…

State laws that mandate in-grade retention for struggling readers are widespread in the U.S., covering 34% of public-school third graders in 2023-24. This study investigates the impacts of Michigan's third-grade reading law on subsequent test scores and school progress outcomes for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 third-grade cohorts. Using a regression…

Long before the Dobbs decision, abortion was a fraught topic in communication classes. Post-Dobbs, the disincentives to discussing abortion intensified as a slew of state legislative actions-imposed restrictions not only on abortion access, but also on anything that might be construed as support for abortion. The purpose with this essay is to…

As technology becomes more important in our daily lives, teaching computer science in schools is becoming a priority. In 2022, the Tennessee General Assembly passed PC 979, a law requiring all public and charter schools to teach computer science at every grade level including kindergarten classrooms (Tennessee Department of Education, 2024). While…

This article provides an overview of the research method meta-analysis as a tool for general music advocacy. "Why music education?" is framed as underlying advocacy efforts, noting a historical duality between musical outcomes and nonmusical outcomes. A vignette is provided to show how meta-analyses were used to impact legislation on…

In this reflexive essay we examine the shifting landscape of higher education in the southern United States, focusing on the impact of anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) legislation on public higher education. Across the United States over 136 anti-DEI bills have been introduced since 2023, significantly affecting university programs and…

Despite increasing enrollment rates among Great Lakes state charter schools, a growing body of research acknowledged the disproportionate number of charter school closures experienced by a marginalized student population. The purpose of this qualitative comparison case study was to examine whether inequities existed in the contract renewal process…