The 2015 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act placed a 1.0% cap on the participation of students with disabilities in the alternate assessment based on alternate academic achievement standards (AA-AAAS). U.S. Department of Education regulations clarified that states must develop participation guidelines and a definition of…

In recent years, the push to recognize adults as an important segment of those seeking postsecondary education and training has gained traction. Through setting credential attainment goals, many states realized they needed to make a concerted effort to engage or re-engage adults in postsecondary education in order to reach those goals and meet…

California voters signaled their funding priorities by passing a $10 billion state bond for education facilities last November. California's K-12 public schools are expanding their reach with universal transitional kindergarten and dual enrollment in high schools. But K-12 schools face many challenges, including lagging student test scores,…

State governments enact hundreds of policies a year intended to improve outcomes for students. If these policies were self-executing, the impact on American education would be swift and dramatic, and the system today would look profoundly different than it did just one year ago. But the reality is that how a policy is implemented often affects…

Over the past two decades, federal education policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) have sought to improve school performance through accountability systems. As states emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, many began exploring ways to expand accountability beyond ESSA requirements. These efforts…

Ensuring the safety and security of students is vital to creating a positive learning environment. Active shooter situations at postsecondary institutions resulted in about 150 casualties between 2000 and 2017. This prevalence of gun violence at postsecondary institutions, which is often viewed in the context of larger conversations around gun…

School leaders across the country are challenged to build positive school climates by implementing policies aimed at tackling bullying. As educational policies -- like anti-bullying policies -- move from inception to implementation, school leaders oftentimes frame messages to garner support. As stakeholders engage in the policy implementation…

Public debates around whether and how teachers should discuss topics related to race and gender in the classroom have turned classrooms into political battlegrounds. Between April 2021 and January 2023, 18 states passed policies restricting teachers' instruction. Many of these state policies restrict teachers' instruction on topics related to race…

Leveraging racial sensemaking and constructive-developmental frameworks, this study investigates how school leaders implementing culturally responsive-sustaining education make sense of racism, and how their racial beliefs change over time. Given New York State's mandate that educators implement culturally responsive-sustaining education, it made…

State policies to expand computer science (CS) education have popped up nearly everywhere since 2016. This acceleration speaks well to the collaborative work of state boards of education, intermediary and national organizations, state legislatures, and governors who championed those policies. It also speaks to the urgency of increasing all…

Federal law defines English learner (EL) eligibility differently for Indigenous, compared to non-Indigenous, students, allowing for broader entry into the EL category, along with its accompanying resources and services. We interviewed EL leaders from 25 state departments of education to learn about their level of understanding of the…

The Aurora Institute has released state policy recommendations to enable our education system to transition from an industrial age "one-size-fits-all" model, to a future-focused model that supports education innovation, student agency, builds knowledge, and prioritizes mastery of skills and knowledge over seat time. The six identified…

In this dissertation, I study the relationships between financial aid, student characteristics, persistence, and completion in three separate chapters. In all three chapters, I use detailed, student-level administrative data from the UNC System beginning in the Fall 2013 semester. The first chapter is entitled "Tuition Reduction and Student…

Unlike vouchers and tax credit scholarships that do not allow parents to customize their children's education, Education savings accounts (ESAs) provide funding to pay for part-time classes at public and private schools, tutoring, curricula, services for special needs, and more. As navigating the opportunities that come with ESAs can be difficult,…

Background: As attention to the potential negative outcomes of childhood trauma has grown, so have calls for schools to take an active role in supporting students experiencing trauma. These calls extend beyond efforts initiated by individual schools to include those mandated by state law, which largely focus on teacher training and on screening…