Since 2020, legislators across the country have introduced bills aimed at banning instruction of Critical Race Theory in universities. This qualitative study examined 53 bills, most of which contained lists of "divisive concepts" that professors were prohibited from discussing in their classrooms. In addition, I analyzed 26 statements…

Preparing students for science, technology, and engineering careers is an urgent state policy challenge. We examined the design and roll-out of a science testing requirement for high school graduation in Massachusetts. While science test performance improved over time for all demographic subgroups, we observed rising inequality in failure rates…

Established by House Concurrent Resolution No. 39, the Louisiana Teacher Recruitment, Recovery, and Retention (TRRR) Task Force studies the declining enrollment in teacher preparation programs and reviews strategies that can be utilized by the state and individual school districts in locations of teacher shortages to reverse declines. This annual…

Bullying is a public health concern warranting policy-level responses. Toward this end, states are enacting antibullying policies that require schools to be inclusive of parents. The current study examines parent-related challenges as schools implement newly amended antibullying legislation in Connecticut. School personnel data were analyzed from…

In 2011, Virginia's General Assembly enacted legislation that required one credit in a stand-alone personal finance course for graduating students. Subsequently, the Virginia Department of Education developed Standards of Learning (SOLs) for Personal Finance and Economics (Code of Virginia §22.1-200-03B), which included a focus on personal…

This study interrogates "Abbeville v. the State of South Carolina" using a policy-regimes framework to understand the relationship between the South Carolina Judicial System, General Assembly, and Educational stakeholders. We seek to understand how the political interests of the General Assembly and wealthy districts may have subverted a…

This research study was to obtain, through the application of a qualitative narrative design of open-ended questions, the perceptions of school administrators regarding the effectiveness of the 2015 modified legislated implementation of House Bill 2398 and Texas Truancy Prevention Measures programs (TTPM). The TTPM policies and procedures are…

With the implementation of AB 705 in fall 2019, California Community Colleges began to transition to a majority of students' first English and math enrollment starting at transfer level. Research has shown that with the vast increase in access to transfer-level courses, the one-year completion rate of a transfer-level course (i.e., throughput)…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Combatting Classroom Censorship." Contents include: (1) A Wolf in Sheep's…

Open enrollment is an integral part of state public school choice policies. This datapoint captures enrollment provisions that apply specifically to students in foster care, including enrollment priority and educational continuity. [View the full "50-State Comparison: Open Enrollment Policies 2022" here:…

This report argues that the Michigan state constitution's "Blaine Amendment," a provision which prevents parents from drawing on state funding to go outside the public school system, is superseded by the United States Supreme Court's 2020 ruling in the case Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. The report discusses a legislative…

Legislative professionalism is central to the politico-institutional context of postsecondary policy adoption in state governments. The core argument in existing research is that as legislative professionalism increases, structural capacity for decision-making increases. Evidence for this argument is mixed, exclusively quantitative, and assumes a…

Private supplementary tutoring, also known as shadow education, has had a profound influence on Chinese education during the past twenty years. The rapid expansion of shadow education has attracted the attention and increased regulation of the Chinese government. In July 2021, the Chinese government adopted one of the most restrictive legislative…

As of May 2022, 42 state legislatures had introduced bills that would limit how (and whether) teachers can address inequities based on race, gender, and other marginalized identities. At the same time, book bans are becoming increasingly common across the country. Given the importance of providing children opportunities to critically engage with…

Rural elementary school principals and reading coaches were interviewed about their perspectives and implementation approaches of 2021's Florida Statute 1008.25, which addressed the assessment, remediation, progress monitoring, and parental notification of students with substantial reading impairments. Rural school districts were selected based on…