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,…

Within the United States, equity for English learners, while essential, has remained elusive. As such, language policy in education is a central issue. When An Act Relative to Language Opportunity for Our Kids (LOOK Act) was passed in 2017 in Massachusetts, it was celebrated as a victory for bilingual education after a 15-year period of mandated…

This brief examines how state policies and practices continue to evolve in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on data provided by 45 states plus the District of Columbia as of early May 2022. The brief updates our 2021 report, "Are Students Present and Accounted For? An Examination of State Attendance Policies During the COVID-19…

With the infusion of $45 billion in federal funds through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Act and Digital Equity Act over the next five years, states are entering a time of opportunity for closing the digital divide for families. However, there is also an urgent need to strengthen their broadband workforce. Without a prepared…

This 50-state comparison assesses the K-12 school safety policies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The information presented in this interactive resource gives an overview of relevant laws in each state and does not reflect how these laws may interact with other state or federal policies. The interactive resource does not include…

Since the efforts to be made in education equity follow the entire student pathway, this guide seeks to advance a public dialogue about and action toward racial justice across the state's public schools, colleges, and universities. In supporting dialogue and action, this guide also seeks to model it. The model used is borrowed from the California…

Four-day school weeks have proliferated across the United States in recent years, reaching over 650 public school districts in 24 states as of 2019, but little is known about their implementation and there is no consensus on their effects on students. This study uses district level panel data from Oklahoma and a difference-in-differences research…

In 2021-22, Texas implemented a policy requiring all public high school seniors to complete a financial aid application. This paper examines the early impacts of this requirement on Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion rates and college enrollment using a difference-in-differences model. First, using a sample of high schools…

Disabled college students face significant barriers to degree completion, including systemic inequities in financial aid policies. This Issue Article investigates financial aid policies that unfairly limit aid to disabled students, at times forcing them to choose between maximizing their financial aid and the recommended accommodations to which…

This report captures state leaders' perspectives on various issues relating to education technology at this unique moment in time. To be more precise, the report provides an analysis of the feedback collected from state leaders through surveys administered in April and May 2023. It seeks to catalog the ways in which state education agencies are…

Current reports highlight the status of the teaching profession is at a 50-year low, noting sobering statistics about low teacher morale, the loss of professional prestige, lack of student interest to pursue teaching, and increased percentages of teachers thinking about leaving (Marken & Agrawal, 2022; Mission Square Research Institute, 2021;…

The growing fiscal cost of K-12 teacher pension plans and pension-induced labor market distortions have led to calls for teacher pension reforms. Dynamic structural econometric models are a useful way to analyze the fiscal and staffing consequences of current and alternative retirement plans. This article lays out the benefits of the structural…

Professional development (PD) plays an important role in the quality of K-12 physical education teachers (PETs) and PD policies affect the implementation of PD at the state level in the United States. To date, no studies have examined PD policies for PETs. Therefore, this project aimed to examine changes of state PD policies for PETs from 2001 to…