Background: State policies influence the quantity and quality of educational programs delivered in schools. This study examined state physical education policy changes from 2001 to 2016 by analyzing data reported in "The Shape of the Nation Report." Methods: Policies related to state mandates for physical education, time/credit…

Fair Haven Union High School (FHUHS) is a small school of approximately 375 students in rural Vermont. The district is called the Slate Valley Unified School District (SVUSD) and consists of about 1,320 students who come from five sending towns. The school is currently undergoing several educationally innovative changes as directed by the Vermont…

The large, often miserable, state-run institutions that used to house people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) are closing as people with IDD increasingly live in community. Most states are actively working to close the remaining large state-run and non-state IDD institutions. If current trends continue, the remaining state-run…

Personalized, competency-based learning efforts often take place in a single classroom or school, but not systematically across districts, let alone states. To address this dynamic and increase the scale of personalized, competency-based learning, KnowledgeWorks, an independent nonprofit organization that partners with education stakeholders to…

Many states and school districts are implementing reforms to reduce reliance on exclusionary discipline such as out-of-school suspension and expulsion. This article uses survey and administrative data to study the implementation of a state-level policy limiting elementary school out-of-school suspension and expulsions. While the results are…

Eligibility is a policy construct unique to California. UC and CSU are the only US universities that distinguish between eligibility for admission and admission itself and set separate requirements for each. The eligibility construct derives originally from California's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, which famously mandated that UC admit…

English learners (ELs) are a fast-growing and diverse student population in the U.S. K-12 public school system. Representing more than 400 languages spoken, EL students bring rich linguistic and cultural traditions to their communities. To better understand education finance equity for EL students in the Southeast, this analysis focuses on nine…

In the late 1930s, the NAACP launched a campaign to equalize Black and white teacher salaries in the de jure segregated schools of the American South. Using newly collected county panel data spanning three decades, this paper first documents heterogeneous within-state impacts of the campaign on teacher salaries. In states that reinforced…

"State Policy Opportunities: Advancing Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems to Support Students" aims to help state leaders understand their role, as well as the urgency, in addressing student mental health needs. The specific recommendations, and the numerous state examples and resources provided, identify policy opportunities for…

This poll was conducted between August 15-16, 2022 among a sample of 2,200 adults. The interviews were conducted online and the data were weighted to approximate a target sample of adults based on gender, educational attainment, age, race, and region. Among the key findings are: (1) More than two-thirds of school parents have heard of teacher…

The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how and why different state financial aid policy designs have developed, with particular attention to external influences, and what effect those design choices have on student outcomes. In the first essay, I use the theoretical framework of diffusion to understand the design and adoption of…

State-mandated curriculum policy documents have an important political function. Governments use them to make ideological statements about the role of schools and how the next generation of citizens are to be shaped. Beginning from this premise, we use a frame analysis methodology to examine how citizenship in the Province of Ontario, Canada is…

As families and communities grapple with the COVID-19 crisis, child care should be a front-and-center issue. Widespread school and child care closures have created an immediate crisis for workers whose jobs don't allow telework options--whether it's those in the health care industry or people employed in grocery stores or other low-wage…

This 50-State Comparison provides data on states' early care and education governance systems, with a focus on the agencies that oversee these programs, the level of alignment of these programs and the advisory entities for early care and education in the state. This data point shows if the advisory entity for each state is defined in statute,…

This brief describes a new method for states to determine how well their charter school facility needs are being met with state policies, both at present and in the future as the number of charter schools increases. The brief also illustrates how this new approach, called a Charter Facility Index, can be used in practice, with three state…