Education savings accounts (ESAs) are designed to provide families with greater flexibility in designing educational programs that meet the needs of their children outside of the public system. Through ESAs, state education funds that are allocated for a child to attend public school are transferred directly to the child's family to use for the…

Workforce development is one of the top issues for state higher education executives today. Employers are actively looking for ways to address skill gaps and labor shortages in their companies. To address these talent gaps, states are aligning their academic program approval process with state workforce needs. Minimal research has explored the…

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 led to unprecedented shifts in American education. Prior to the onset of the pandemic, children across the United States were primarily educated in brick-and-mortar school buildings, with only 0.6% of the over 50 million students in the country attending fully virtual schools (National Center…

Growth in per pupil education spending in the United States was mostly flat until 1918, after which it increased by almost 100 percent in a brief six-year period. This is the fastest documented increase in per pupil education spending in U.S. history. Using newly digitized biennial data on 386 of the largest urban school systems in the United…

As in many American metropolitan areas, inequality in Chicagoland is visible in its neighborhoods. These inequalities are not inevitable, however. They have been constructed and deepened by public policies around housing, schooling, taxation, and local governance, including hidden state government policies. In "Structuring Inequality",…

This technical report accompanies the "Listed Home-Based Child Care Providers and Child Care and Early Education Policies Series." This series of three research briefs presents findings from the first nationally representative analysis of the patterns and predictors of listed home-based child care (HBCC) providers' interactions with…

NASP has long focused on efforts to remedy the shortages in school psychology and it has been a strategic goal of the organization since 2012. NASP, state school psychology associations, and individual school psychologists have devoted countless hours to examining the myriad variables that impact the shortages and to propose and enact solutions.…

States use statute and regulations to substantiate which behaviors "may" result in a student being suspended or expelled, with varying degrees of discretion allowed at local levels. This data point captures the offenses for which students may be suspended or expelled. At least 32 states and the District of Columbia allow suspension or…

This study addressed the impact of the Alabama Literacy Act on early childhood educators' literacy instruction. The researcher employed an explanatory sequential mixed methods design (Quan[right arrow]Qual) (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018). To address the purpose of this study, the central mixed methods question was: In what ways does the…

Recent research highlights teachers' key role as language policy interpreters, yet few studies have explored whether and how teachers learn about policy interpretation. This article explores how language policy interpretation is addressed within a statewide teacher education initiative in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Since 2012, the state has…

Access to higher education varies across states for undocumented students (with or without Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA]). In-state resident tuition policies (ISRTs) provide eligible undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates at public universities and colleges. This qualitative study examines interviews from institutional…

Teacher shortages are often viewed as a national issue and through a national lens. But individual states' challenges in addressing special education teacher shortages differ in degree and kind, and states thus enact varied solutions to address them. A state's geography, resources, and political climate are just a few elements that can drive…

Substantial evidence supports comprehensive sex education programs as effective means of promoting adolescent sexual health, but evidence on the effect of state-level sex education policy is inconclusive. Multiple states in the U.S. afford local authority in school policy, and existing literature calls for investigation of the impact of local…

Since the early 2000s, accountability and evaluation have been regarded by policymakers as key mechanisms for "fixing" teacher education and by many teacher education leaders as vehicles for elevating the status of the profession and uniting a fragmented field. Although educational inequity has been an enduring and endemic problem during…

Created by partnerships of educator preparation programs, school districts, and community-based organizations, grow-your-own programs recruit, prepare, and place community members as teachers. They typically recruit and prepare high school students, school classified staff (e.g., paraeducators, afterschool workers, bus drivers), career changers,…