The daily demands on school principals require clear and consistent feedback, and without a mentor, a new principal may not have this type of assistance. This phenomenological study explores the perceptions of new principals and their assigned mentors in one legislated initiative, named by the researcher as the Vermont mentoring…

Community colleges in Tennessee, either directly or indirectly, experienced unprecedented change as a result of Tennessee Promise. The present study explored how student support service administrators at three community colleges responded to organizational change as a result of the Tennessee Promise legislation. Investigators selected community…

Previous policy analysis of the Top Ten Percent Plan (TTPP) has focused on the outcomes of the policy (e.g., Card & Krueger, 2005; Kain & O'Brien, 2004; Long, 2004), answering questions such as whether the TTPP led to increased or decreased access for particular groups. Absent from the literature is an analysis of the policy-change process…

The coming 2016 fall elections influenced legislative activity for charter public schools during this year's state legislative sessions. This November, legislative elections will be held in 46 states, and gubernatorial elections will be held in 12 states. These looming elections became an excuse for some legislators to avoid tough votes on…

Though California's English Learner (EL) policies were developed in response to civil rights struggles for language access and equal educational opportunity, they are also conditioned by the history of U.S. settler and overseas conquest. This article presents a Critical Policy Analysis (CPA) of the California EL classification policies and…

California's public schools boast the nation's largest population of English learners--approximately 1.15 million in the 2019-20 school year. The potential civic, intellectual, economic, and cultural contributions of this group of multilingual students are enormous. Yet too often, their assets remain undervalued and untapped because traditional…

This study focused on the policy impact of SB 1456 (2012) on students enrolled in rural community colleges in California. SB 1456 (2012) was signed into law with the intent to increase student success rates that ultimately resulted in the completion of educational goals for students in California Community Colleges (CCC). In order to examine the…

Objectives: This study examines the effectiveness of interventions in first-year math courses in higher education. Our goal is to investigate the efficacy of a supplemental support requirement on the passing rates of students in their first-year math courses. Method: We gathered and analyzed data on 3,249 students using descriptive statistics and…

Charter school authorizers play a crucial role in shaping the quality and availability of charter schools throughout Georgia. In partnership with the State Board of Education, state law allows local school districts and the State Charter Schools Commission to approve and oversee charter schools. While much is known about existing charter schools…

In Illinois, Senate Bill 100 was known in the statutes as Public Act 99-0456, took effect September, 15, 2016. Illinois State Senator Kimberly Lightford and Illinois State Representative William Davis both sponsored Senate Bill 100. Senator Lightford said, "We're moving toward a disciplinary system that prioritizes educating students by…

Researchers suggest that the economy of the future will consist of jobs that do not currently exist, there will likely be a shortage of individuals with necessary education and credentials to fill those jobs, and if the nation does not produce this workforce, there will likely be a $1.72 trillion loss in productivity by 2030. Considering these…

The federal "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA) has stimulated states to revisit school improvement. Previously, the Center analyzed ESSA and the related consolidated state plans using the lens of how the federal legislation and state plans address barriers to learning and teaching and re-engage disconnected students. Such analyses…

A new law, Assembly Bill 705 (Irwin), is driving dramatic changes to how the California Community Colleges place students into English and math courses. In fall 2019, AB 705 began requiring the colleges to use students' high school grades as the primary means of placement; restricting colleges from denying students access to transferable…

In the 2018-19 school year, Washington's schools served 61,119 public school students that identified as American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN). The Office of Native Education (ONE), established in the 1960s, assists AI/AN students to achieve basic education goals and meet state standards while supporting cultural identity. This report addresses…

Every year we invest billions in professional development to build teachers' capacity to better address the diverse academic needs of every student. Yet student learning continues to fall short of expectations in too many places. We must ask the question: Is there a better way to invest in the professional learning of teachers across America? Our…