Legislation passed in 2011 required the Washington Student Achievement Council to convene the Prior Learning Assessment Workgroup to coordinate and implement seven goals described in statute for promoting the award of college credit for prior learning. This report summarizes progress made in 2013 and also outlines a work plan of activities to be…

This study focuses on Public Act 103 of 2011, which made teacher evaluation, layoff policies and teacher placement prohibited subjects of bargaining, among other things. After surveying 200 Michigan school district collective bargaining agreements, this study finds that as many as 60 percent of districts could have collective bargaining agreements…

The outcomes states gain from investing in postsecondary financial aid programs remain hotly debated, leading to great interest in developing programs that are both cost-effective and productive in helping states meet goals. In the 2012-13 academic year, states collectively provided approximately $11.2 billion in financial aid to students enrolled…

Background: Within the last few years, the focus on educational accountability has shifted from holding students responsible for their own performance to holding those shown to impact student performance responsible--students' teachers. Encouraged and financially incentivized by federal programs, states are becoming ever more reliant on…

Before Heman Sweatt, an African-American from Houston, won his lawsuit to attend the University of Texas (UT) School of Law, Carlos Cadena, a Mexican-American from San Antonio, was among its brightest students. Cadena graduated summa cum laude from the law school in 1940, a decade before Sweatt's lawsuit forced UT to open its graduate and…

Five years after the Virginia Tech massacre prompted a student in Texas to start a Facebook page in favor of the right to carry concealed weapons on college campuses, the resulting group, Students for Concealed Carry, has advanced its cause. In more than a dozen states, legislation has been introduced to allow the carrying of concealed firearms on…

The purpose of "Transforming Schooling for Second Language Learners: Theoretical Insights, Policies, Pedagogies, and Practices" is to bring together educational researchers and practitioners who have implemented, documented, or examined policies, pedagogies, and practices in and out of classrooms and in real and virtual contexts that are…

Response to intervention (RTI) remains a major issue in both the professional literature and school practice. A series of previous "snapshot" studies traced the development of RTI in state laws concerning identification of students with specific learning disability (SLD). In the last article in this series, Zirkel and Thomas (2010) reported that…

This research study examines the impact of the level of state tax code progressivity on selected children's health outcomes. Specifically, it examines the degree to which a state's tax code ranking along the progressive-regressive continuum relates to percentage of low birthweight babies, infant and child mortality rates, and percentage of…

Only about one-third of children attending school in the United States can read proficiently at fourth grade, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as "the nation's report card." If that is not dismaying enough, consider the outcomes for the nation's most vulnerable students. The first eight years of…

In this article, we explain how overly prescriptive, rigid state statutory and regulatory policy frameworks regarding teacher evaluation, tenure and employment decisions outstrip the statistical reliability and validity of proposed measures of teaching effectiveness. We begin with a discussion of the emergence of highly prescriptive state…

This article take a critical look at what can be done to create safe school climates for all students because some schools are not the safest places in our communities when it comes to emotional or intellectual safety--and this is especially true for those who are "different." Children with special needs, gender non-conforming students,…

Reforming the way a state distributes its funding to local school districts is a challenging task. Too often, state leaders embrace major school funding reform only when they are directed by court decisions. In this seemingly contentious policy domain, the Rhode Island General Assembly defied the odds--working in a recessionary climate and in the…

This dissertation explored the constitutionality of a Georgia law, under both the Georgia Constitution and the United States Constitution, which allows for the removal of elected school board members based on threatened loss of district accreditation. The problem is that elected board members are being removed from office based on district…

The recent interest in harnessing the collective capacity of public institutions of higher education is challenging long-held beliefs about system coordination. Constricted state resources, globalization, market forces, and new technologies suggest that new governance structures are not only a necessity but an opportunity to better connect system…