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This paper examines how the process of making higher education choices in the United States--whether to enter higher education, attend a particular college, or follow a particular path through college--produces and legitimates social inequality. The paper's central thesis is that a societal regime of many choices--while serving individual freedom and producing social well-being--"produces" societal inequality in a way that obscures that process of social reproduction for virtually all who participate in that choice regime. Students often make choices that do not serve their interests as well as they might wish, particularly if students are faced with many choices and do not have adequate information. The incidence of those suboptimal choices is not random but is socially stratified. It is higher for less advantaged people, and unequal provision of good information plays a crucial role in producing those socially stratified suboptimal choices. Secondly, the provision of many choices "legitimates" social inequality. Seemingly offered many choices in life, both the fortunate and unfortunate in society come to feel that much of the inequality they experience is due to their own actions and therefore is legitimate. The paper concludes by offering various prescriptions for reducing the socially stratifying impacts and ideological consequences of a high-choice regime. It lays out how we could more equally distribute high-quality information, nudge students toward better choice making, reduce the costs to students of suboptimal choices, and mitigate blaming self and others by demystifying the nature of choice. In making these arguments, this paper draws on the research literature in sociology of education, behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, and social psychology of inequality.

Even though equity has become a hot topic, the pathway to making it a reality has not necessarily become clear. The national agenda on race, racial equity, and dealing with COVID-19 has pushed the challenge of equity to the front and center for schools. This pressurized moment in history has raised important questions: (1) What are the steps to an effective equity journey? and (2) What are the standards and targets to guide the pursuit of equity outcomes? What are the conditions for success in an effective, equitable district? What are the capacities and practices of equitable leaders and practitioners? This paper will highlight a few resources that may be helpful and will refer to many others. There are multitudes of resources available today to support equity development on a personal, organizational, institutional, and societal level. [The paper was prepared with the Center for Understanding Equity.]

This study examines the emerging relationship between microcredentials and qualification systems. Information gathered through an online survey among European VET providers, national authorities, employee and employer organisations was complemented by in-depth country case studies and interviews with Cedefop's ReferNet network. Questions of whether and how microcredentials should be related to established qualification systems are at an early stage of consideration in most countries; the focus is on better defining and standardising their role within national qualifications systems. Existing trends towards modularisation and the recognition of prior learning provide potential avenues for realising the benefits of microcredentials in terms of flexibility and responsiveness, while also ensuring their quality for learners and employers. There is still significant debate over how to deal with microcredentials, and how to avoid potential negative effects, such as encouraging a shift away from holistic education towards short-duration learning based around reduced skill sets. Microcredentials are a complex phenomenon, particularly with regard to their relationship to qualifications. In recent years, there has been an acceleration in the availability and use of microcredentials in the labour market, raising questions about their relationship to VET and to qualification systems. The proliferation of microcredentials of different types across various sectors, occupations, education sectors and levels and countries, along with variations between countries in the nature of qualification systems -- which are undergoing change -- make this a complex landscape to research and analyse. To date there has been a lack of data at EU level informing decision-making in this area. This report aims to be a first step towards filling some key gaps in the knowledge around these topics, addressing three main research questions.

This paper focuses on the increase in families who have chosen to homeschool their children in grades K-12 since the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic. This update includes interviews with families who opted to homeschool their children in the conventional approach, rather than continue with the hasty remote learning that educators tried to transfer from the classroom in March of 2020 and then the blended approach of online learning/classrooms-with-masks format that many districts used during the 2020-2021 school year. This report follows a study authored in June of 2017, "Homeschooling: The Ultimate School Choice," also published by the Pioneer Institute. It covered the history of homeschooling, demographics on homeschoolers, the economics around homeschooling and legislation affecting homeschooling. The authors of this report include several recommendations on how policy makers and education administrators can accommodate the growth in homeschooling and assist families who chose this manner of education for their children. The authors also urge policy makers and education officials to do more to acknowledge homeschooling as a viable educational choice. Districts and states can do more to provide direction and information for parents who are considering non-traditional options. [Foreword written by Kerry McDonald. For "Homeschooling: The Ultimate School Choice," see ED588847.]

Filling the STEM pipeline from secondary schools to postsecondary institutions is essential for the nations' competitiveness in the 21st century. It is therefore crucial to motivate more high school students to consider entering one of the STEM fields and to prepare themselves by taking advanced coursework in STEM that will prime them for choosing a STEM major in college, and eventually, a STEM career. High school students' pathway to a college STEM major can be seen as related to a series of academic choices (e.g., middle school STEM related activities, high school STEM coursetaking, and outside of school activities) and achievements that begin in early schooling years and continue to develop in secondary school (Eccles, 1994; Wang, 2013; Wang & Degol, 2013). This current study develops a comprehensive conceptual framework to describe how high school STEM coursetaking, STEM GPA, and motivational beliefs on science and mathematics are related to students' decisions about whether to choose a STEM major at 4-year college after taking into consideration student, family, and school background factors. The conceptual framework focuses on the direct relationships between five factors and choosing a STEM major in college: mathematics motivation, science motivation, high school STEM coursetaking, STEM achievement, and social networks. The results of simple comparisons of mathematics and science motivation between students in STEM- and non-STEM majors indicated that STEM-major students have a higher level of mathematics and science motivation in all four measured constructs (mathematics identity, mathematics self-efficacy, science identity, and science self-efficacy) compared to non-STEM major students. The structural equation model (SEM) results, which take into consideration of factors for other high school experiences, further identified the significant relationships between STEM motivation and having a STEM major in college. The findings suggest that science identity had the strongest association with students' choice of a STEM major among all other motivation variables, STEM coursetaking, and achievement variables.

This paper investigates whether the decision to attend university depends on university enrollment of close neighbors. I create a unique dataset combining detailed geographic information and educational records from different public agencies in Chile, and exploit the quasi-random variation generated by the rules that determine eligibility for student loans. I find that close neighbors have a large and significant impact on university enrollment of younger applicants. Potential applicants are around 11 percentage points more likely to attend university if a close neighbor enrolled the year before. This effect is particularly strong in areas with low exposure to university and among individuals who are more likely to interact; the effect decreases both with geographic and social distance and is weaker for individuals who have spent less time in the neighborhood. I also show that the increase in university attendance translates into retention and university completion. These effects are mediated by an increase in applications rather than by an improvement on applicants' academic performance. This set of results suggests that policies that expand access to university generate positive spillovers on close peers of the direct beneficiaries.

There is growing interest in using measures of teacher applicant quality to improve hiring decisions, but the statistical properties of such measures are poorly understood. We present evidence on structured ratings solicited from teacher applicants' references. We find that the reference ratings capture only one underlying dimension of applicant quality, which may indicate a need to broaden the range of questions posed to professional references. Point estimates of inter-rater reliability range between 0.23 and 0.31 and are significantly lower for novice applicants. It is difficult to judge whether these levels of reliability are high or low in the current context given so little evidence on comparable applicant assessment tools.

Education researchers use surveys widely. Yet, critics question respondents' ability to provide high-quality responses. As schools increasingly use student surveys to drive policymaking, respondents' (lack of) motivation to provide quality responses may threaten the wisdom of using surveys for data-based decision-making. To better understand student satisficing (suboptimal responding on surveys) and its impact on data quality, we examined the pervasiveness and impact of this practice on a large-scale social-emotional learning survey administered to 409,721 students in grades 2-12. Findings indicated that despite the prevalence of satisficing in our sample, its impact on data quality appeared more modest than anticipated. We conclude by providing an accessible approach for defining and calculating satisficing for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working with large-scale datasets.

In this paper we estimate the impacts of the "pathways" chosen by community college students--in terms of desired credentials and fields of study, as well as other choices and outcomes along the paths--on the attainment of credentials with labor market value. We focus on the extent to which there are recorded changes in students' choices over time, whether students make choices informed by their chances of success and by labor market value of credentials, and the impacts of choices on outcomes. We find that several characteristics of chosen pathways, such as field of study and desired credential as well as early "momentum," affect outcomes. Student choices of pathways are not always driven by information about later chances of success, in terms of probabilities of completing programs and attaining strong earnings. Students also change pathways quite frequently, making it harder to accumulate the credits needed in their fields. Attainment of credentials with greater market value could thus likely be improved by appropriate guidance and supports for students along the way, and perhaps by broader institutional changes as well. [Financial support for this report was provided by the Economic Self-Sufficiency Policy Research Institute (ESSPRI) at UC Irvine.]

How can we see education research as a coherent body of inquiry? The naturally occurring diversity of epistemologies and methods give education research the appearance of discord. In this paper, we propose that all of these various methods, questions, and interpretive frameworks of education research share a common commitment to the idea that "education is design for learning." We begin with a discussion of how recent efforts at the global and national policy levels have sought to position scientific inquiry as the premiere version of education research based on the model of social sciences. We then discuss the role of practical inquiry as a necessary complement to both receive and generate positivist knowledge. The iteration between scientific and practical inquiry describes a path for how scientific and practical work can be naturally linked in an iterative inquiry for improving education processes and outcomes. However, without a critical perspective, this iterative process can become detached from valued social concerns and become an exercise in optimization, rather than improvement. We propose that critical inquiry should be systemically integrated into the design process for researchers and educators to reflect on both the intentions and consequences of the scientific-practical cycle. We then describe how integrating these approaches can show the way toward to a coherent model of education research.

In just the last 18 months, Massachusetts has seen the closure of small private liberal arts colleges Mount Ida and Newbury Colleges. The pressures on these types of institutions include technological disruption, changing student demands, and ever-escalating costs. To address this, the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education (BHE) and Department of Higher Education (DHE) have proposed creating a new state agency, called the Office of Student Protection (OSP), that would be granted unilateral authority to order colleges to notify students and other stakeholders by December 1st of any academic year where a meaningful risk exists that the college cannot complete the current school year and the next one. Under the proposal, OSP would be empowered to order a December 1st notification even if the college has a current satisfactory Financial Responsibility Composite Score from the U.S. Department of Education, qualifying its students to receive federal financial aid and loans, and even if the college is currently accredited by the U.S. DOE's approved regional accrediting agency, the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE). On March 6, 2019, Governor Baker filed Senate Bill 2183, which proposes giving BHE authority to request information from private higher education institutions "to accurately and fairly determine the institution's financial condition and to monitor such condition over time" and "to impose sanctions on institutions that do not comply in a timely manner." The legislation also proposes giving BHE authority to compel higher education institutions "to prepare and submit to [BHE], for its approval, a contingency closure plan which shall include a process for providing enrolled and admitted students and staff with timely notification of the institution's financial condition" and "arrangements for enabling students to complete their programs of study" if BHE identifies the institution as having liabilities or risks that may result in imminent closure or jeopardize the institution's ability to fulfill its obligations to current and admitted students. Under the proposed legislation, such contingency closure plans would be subject to BHE approval. The proposed legislation would exempt information submitted by institutions of higher education at BHE's request from the Massachusetts public records law. The proposed legislation also directs BHE to establish regulations interpreting and applying this new section of law, following consultation with representatives of public and private colleges and universities. The stated goal of BHE's proposal is to protect students from sudden, unexpected closings such as what happened with Mount Ida College. According to BHE and DHE, their proposal would provide an earlier warning of potential college closures than has historically been provided by USDOE and NECHE. In this report, Pioneer Institute identifies 10 serious problems with the BHE/DHE proposal.

High-stakes decisions are often made for English learners in the K-12 context based on their performance on English language proficiency assessments. Although states and districts provide guidelines for making such decisions, little is known regarding how educators actually make decisions at the district and school levels. Understanding these decisions is important as they often have significant consequences. In addition, evidence regarding the decisions is necessary to support validity claims made regarding the use of the assessments. This study examines how K-12 educators identify and place English learners in language instruction educational programs. These educators serve ELs in different capacities, including district coordinators, instructional coaches, administrators, teachers, and counselors. Participants were sampled from 35 U.S. states, using stratified random sampling. A total of 476 educators (207 district-level and 269 school-level educators) completed an online survey on EL identification and placement. Findings reveal information regarding (1) educators who make decisions about English learner identification and placement, (2) instruments and information sources used for decision making, and (3) educators' perceived appropriateness of the decisions. Results provide practical implications for improving the English learner identification and placement decision at the district and school levels.

A growing number of institutions undertaking "guided pathways" reforms are rethinking how students select programs of study, choose courses, and make other program-related choices. One primary aim is to help students make thoughtful decisions about their programs early on as a means to encourage faster and more satisfying college completion. The City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) has been undertaking a guided pathways reform effort for several years. Based largely on student interviews, this paper describes how degree-seeking students at CCC make choices about their programs in their first year of enrollment, focusing especially on how they interact with advisors and how they use college-based resources in program selection and program planning. We find that the complex process of program selection and planning is undertaken differently by students with greater or lesser tolerance for ambiguity, and that inconsistent or conflicting information about program details is particularly frustrating for some students. We recommend that institutions engaging in guided pathways reform efforts clarify advising processes and materials to reduce contradictory information and confusion.

How do labor income shocks affect household investment in upper secondary and tertiary schooling? Using longitudinal data from 2005-15 for Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, this paper explores the effect of a negative household income shock on the enrollment status of youth ages 15 to 25. The findings suggest that negative income shocks significantly increase the likelihood that students in upper secondary and tertiary school exit school in Argentina and Brazil, but not in Mexico. For the three countries, the analysis finds evidence that youth who drop out due to a household income shock have worse employment outcomes than similar youth who exit school without a household income shock. Differences in labor markets and safety net programs likely play an important role in the decision to exit school as well as the employment outcomes of those who exit across these three countries.

Existing research on the effectiveness of college career services centers (CSCs) has primarily focused on students' rates of utilization and their satisfaction with the programs and services offered. Based on survey (n = 372) and focus group data (n = 35) from undergraduate business students, we found that participants were most satisfied with the CSC's provision of practical tools that enhanced employability and were least satisfied with the CSC's integration of students' backgrounds and interests during advising. Our qualitative analysis yielded three categories of contributors (i.e., sociocultural factors, independent activities, and institutional factors) to student career outcomes, which were psychological characteristics, career decisions, and social capital. Sociocultural factors were most prominently featured in students' narratives of their experiences, in that they shaped how students leveraged institutional resources and how they engaged in independent activities as part of their career trajectories. Practical implications and future research directions are discussed.

In order to graduate with a bachelor's degree, students must determine which classes they must take in order to satisfy the requirements of their major. These requirements are often complex and difficult to comprehend, leading to some policy interventions that aim to reduce complexity by either increasing the amount of student guidance in course choice or by reducing the amount of complexity-increasing choice. We perform two student preference experiments on students at two large four-year universities to determine how students might respond to increasing guidance or reduced choice in their course-taking options. We find that students do not respond strongly to increases in guidance, but strongly reject a reduction in options, even when given a rationale for the reduction. These results suggest that increased-guidance policies have some avenues to operate in without student pushback, but that strong reductions in choice are unlikely to be popular.

This essay discusses the contentious events leading to the decision by the University of California's Board of Regents to end affirmative action in admissions, hiring and contracting at the university in July 1995. This controversial decision provided momentum for California's passage of Proposition 209 the following year ending "racial preferences" for all of the state's public agencies. In virtually any other state, the debate over university admissions would have bled beyond the confines of a university's governing board. The board would have deferred to lawmakers and an even more complicated public discourse. The University of California's unusual status as a "public trust" under the state constitution, however, meant that authority over admissions was the sole responsibility of the board. This provided a unique forum to debate affirmative action for key actors, including Regent Ward Connerly and Governor Pete Wilson, to persuade fellow regents to focus and decide on a hotly debated social issue related to the dispersal of a highly sought public good -- access to a selective public university. Two themes are explored. The first focuses on the debate within the university community and the vulnerability of existing affirmative action programs and policies -- including a lack of unanimity among the faculty regarding the use of racial preferences. The second relates to the political tactics employed by Connerly and the saliency of his arguments, which were addressed to a larger public, and not to the academic community. Connerly attacked not only the idea of affirmative action but also the coherency of the university's existing admissions programs, the effectiveness of using race in admissions decisions, and the credibility of the university's administrative leaders who defended affirmative action.

A 1966 University of California academic plan estimated that future enrollments would soar to well over 200,000 before leveling off, and that by 1975 student demand would require two more UC campuses in addition to the ones opened a few years earlier at Santa Cruz, Irvine, and San Diego. The 1970 US census brought these stratospheric assumptions down to earth. Its projections of declining numbers of college-age students into the next decade and beyond, combined with the shock of unfavorable academic market and budgetary trends, became the starting point for an ambitious new UC planning endeavor. The intent was to improve long-range decision-making on the size, quality, and academic balance of the University. The strategy was to ensure that planning led budgeting; that campus academic plans were systematically reviewed at the university-wide and Regental level; and that fiscal realities disciplined planning at all levels. Two UC presidents led this experiment in multi-campus system planning. Charles J. Hitch (1968-1975) had revolutionized planning and budgeting at Robert S. McNamara's Department of Defense before coming to UC. David S. Saxon (1975-1983) brought a deep knowledge of the University and its culture gained through long experience as a faculty and administrative leader at UCLA. Despite differences in background, perspective, and approach, both shared the same goal: to create a truly university-wide plan that harmonized campus ambitions with the broader aims of the University as a whole and with the coming constraints on growth. This paper considers the context, assumptions, and forces that shaped, and then reshaped, the planning directions UC chose at the end of the golden age of the 1960s. A bibliography is included.

Although many may be surprised at the growth of homeschooling during the past few decades, the real surprise is probably how that growth happened and that it continues. Home school advocates and practitioners have succeeded despite a lack of funding, recruiting efforts, publicity, and grant money from philanthropic billionaires. They have faced opposition from the National Education Association (NEA), obstacles imposed by individual school districts and various state restrictions, regulations, and requirements. There is also little if any professional development for parent-instructors and virtually no future career path (or pensions) for those parents. Systemically, there is a lack of institutional knowledge with which to keep the homeschooling movement going forward. This paper attempts to elucidate some of these issues by reviewing a brief history of homeschooling, the challenges associated with defining and counting homeschoolers, the predominant reasons for homeschooling, and the critical role parental choice plays in the decision to homeschool. By becoming more knowledgeable about the practices and benefits of homeschooling, traditional educators can begin to offer parents information, support, and encouragement, treating them as educational colleagues who care deeply about children's learning.

Education policy worldwide has sought to incentivize school improvement and facilitate pupil-school matching by introducing reforms that promote autonomy and choice. Understanding the way in which families form preferences during these periods of reform is crucial for evaluating the impact of such policies. We study the effects on choice of a recent shock to the English school system--the academy programme--which gave existing state schools greater autonomy, but provided limited information on possible expected benefits. We use administrative data on school applications for three cohorts of students to estimate whether academy conversion changes schools' popularity. We find that families--particularly non-poor, White British ones--rank converted schools higher on average. Expected changes in composition, effectiveness and other school policies cannot explain this updating of preferences. Instead, the patterns suggest that families combine the signal of conversion with prior information on quality, popularity and proximity as a heuristic for assessing a school's expected future performance. The following are appended: (1) Robustness checks; and (2) Estimating Academies' Effectiveness using Legacy Enrolled Pupils. [This paper was produced as part of the Centre for Economic Performance's Education and Skills Programme.]

This paper is a description and analysis of the history of the renovation of Memorial Stadium and the building of the Barclay Simpson Student Athlete High Performance Center (SAHPC) on the Berkeley campus, showing how incremental changes over time result in a much riskier and financially less viable project than originally anticipated. It describes the decision making process, the role of various constituent groups including senior administrators and the UC Regents, faculty, community members and local and state governmental officials, donors and protesters. It includes the legal challenges and financial implications of the most expensive intercollegiate athletics capital project in the nation totaling $474 million dollars. Taking into account debt servicing over time, the total expenditures could approach more than $1 billion. These projects were highly controversial from their inception, continue to be so to this day because of current campus wide financial challenges, and illustrate the complexity and risk of managing big-time intercollegiate athletics programs. This study draws on two theories of organizational decisionmaking, Diane Vaughan's normalization of deviance and Charles Lindblom's science of muddling through. They are part of a larger debate within the social sciences about the degree to which structure and/or agency determine human behavior. Structure is the broad framework of rules, regulations, expectations, history and tradition within which organizations function and which provide limits or constraints on human behavior. Most organizational decisions are made within this framework and are inevitably incremental and often risk averse. Agency is the ability to take independent action despite the constraints of structure, entails greater risk, and becomes necessary because behavior within the organization has become normalized over time and deviates, even unknowingly, from changing values. The following are appended: (1) Lindblom's Science of Muddling Through; (2) Brief description of key individuals mentioned in the document; and (3) Chronology of significant events related to the construction of the SAHPC and the renovation of California Memorial Stadium.

Many postsecondary institutions, and community colleges in particular, require that students demonstrate specified levels of literacy and numeracy before taking college-level courses. Typically, students have been assessed using two widely available tests--ACCUPLACER and Compass. However, placement testing practice is beginning to change for three reasons. First, the Compass test will no longer be offered as of the end of 2016. Second, questions have been raised about the validity of commonly used placement tests. Third, there are emerging discussions about the need to consider other aspects of students' readiness to succeed in college, especially so-called noncognitive skills. In this paper, we discuss the history of college placement testing, with a focus on nonselective colleges. We describe the limitations of placement tests, the consequences of placement errors, and the movement toward changing systems of placement. The use of multiple measures is suggested as an approach that will result in more accurate placement. A typology of approaches to assessment and placement is described, including the identification of individual measures (e.g., alternative math and English tests, noncognitive assessments, and high school transcript information), ways to use them in combination (e.g., waivers, decision rules, and placement formulae), and how colleges might use assessment results in more varied ways (e.g., for placement into different course types or services). Finally, we include a discussion of emerging issues affecting assessment and placement practices.

Children's academic and social development before third grade is highly predictive of later success in school and beyond. Research shows that during those early years, the gains children make in language and literacy, mathematics and social skills, and their growth as learners and thinkers are associated with a range of benefits, from academic achievement to economic stability to healthy habits and behaviors. "The Untapped Potential of an Early Childhood Assessment System: A Strategy for Improving Policies and Instruction from Early Childhood through 3rd Grade" outlines how state leaders can reduce or streamline the assessments being used in early learning programs and elementary schools, achieve economies of scale for educator training and leverage existing data systems to yield more powerful data to inform decision-making.

Students need to develop a variety of critical thinking and interpersonal skills in order to contribute successfully to today's increasingly globalized world. The Office of the Provost at the University of Michigan has implemented a plan known as Transforming Learning for a Third Century (TLTC) as part of its broader Third Century Initiative. This plan aims to foster development of such skills, with special emphasis on five distinct learning goals: (1) Creativity; (2) Intercultural engagement; (3) Social/civic responsibility and ethical reasoning; (4) Communication, collaboration, and teamwork; and (5) Self-agency, and the ability to innovate and take risks. The intercultural engagement goal is focused on fostering students' understanding of the role of values and culture in driving decisions, and supporting students as they develop the flexibility to work with others who have different values. More so than any previous generation, it is important for the University of Michigan to offer students opportunities to practice communicating and working with others from many different cultures and background experiences in intelligent, productive, and respectful ways. Aligned with previous TLTC Occasional Papers, this paper begins with a discussion of what intercultural engagement means and how it is conceptualized in the literature, followed by a discussion of the importance of this goal for student development. A summary of different approaches to promote intercultural engagement will then be offered. This paper concludes with an examination of how to assess these skills with an emphasis on choosing appropriate measures.

Initiatives to increase leadership accountability coupled with efforts to promote data-driven leadership have led to widespread adoption of instruments to assess school leaders. In this paper we present a decision matrix that practitioners and researchers can use to facilitate instrument selection. Our decision matrix focuses on the psychometric properties of the instrument; the model of leadership used to construct the instrument; the feasibility of implementation; and the extent to which feedback lends itself to changes in behavior (actionability). We apply this decision matrix to two of the most prominent leadership feedback instruments, CALL and VAL-ED. We find substantial similarities between the instruments, yet each has unique strengths and drawbacks. We discuss the implications of the comparative strengths and drawbacks of the two instruments and how they might be most effectively deployed to improve leadership practices.

Student loans are a crucial aspect of financing a college education for millions of Americans, yet we have surprisingly little empirical evidence concerning individuals' unwillingness to borrow money for educational purposes. This study provides the first large-scale quantitative evidence of levels of loan aversion in the United States. Using survey data collected on more than 6,000 individuals, we examine the frequency of loan aversion in three distinct populations. Depending on the measure, between 20 to 40 percent of high school seniors exhibit loan aversion with lower rates among community college students and adults not in college. Women are less likely to express loan averse attitudes than men, and Hispanic respondents are more likely to be loan averse than white respondents.

We estimate school-choice preferences revealed by the rank-ordered lists submitted by more than 22,000 applicants to a citywide lottery for more than 200 traditional and charter public schools in Washington, DC. The results confirm previously reported findings that commuting distance, school demographics, and academic indicators play important roles in school choice, and that there is considerable heterogeneity of preferences. Simulations suggest segregation by race and income would be reduced and enrollment in high-performing schools increased if policymakers were to expand school choice by relaxing school capacity constraints in individual campuses. The simulations also suggest that closing the lowest-performing schools could further reduce segregation and increase enrollment in high-performing schools. The following are appended: (1) Findings on Neighborhood and Other Non-Academic Characteristics; (2) Detailed Analysis of Endogeneity and Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives; and (3) Supplemental Tables and Figures. [For "Market Signals: How Do DC Parents Rank Schools, and What Does It Mean for Policy? Policy Brief," see ED568708.]

This report presents the underlying theory and methodology of the first framework to operationalize culture and culturally responsiveness in the context of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. Created following a systematic review of literature, this framework was created as a cultural artifact to expand the conceptualization of the role of culture in the implementation of PBIS and other education programs. The author hopes the framework will start a movement to address the systemic contradictions that researchers and practitioners in the field experience regarding racial disparities in behavioral and academic opportunities and outcomes and the locally meaningful implementation of PBIS and other top-to-bottom initiatives and programs (e.g., Response to Intervention [RTI]).

Teacher and student sorting within and between schools has historically garnered national attention and controversy. Scholars have recently examined how school leaders make data-driven decisions to create more equitable schools, particularly through teacher and student assignment practices. School leaders use student test scores to strategically sort students into classes to create "balance." Student achievement data is also linked to teacher reassignment, in which ineffective teachers are strategically reassigned to non-tested grades or subjects, while effective teachers may be promoted to leadership positions. Scholars have found that a combination of data-driven strategic staffing, accountability pressures, and micro-politics are prime drivers of assignment strategies within schools. Within the literature on assignment practices, one strand examines the impact of assignment practices on students but does not engage with principals' decision-making strategies despite the central role principals play in school decisions. The second strand of research delves deeply into leadership decision making but seldom provides data on the actual assignment practices. This includes observed data regarding the two types of assignment strategies dominant within the literature: privilege- and learning-centric. A learning-centric assignment is the placement of highly knowledgeable teachers with students who need effective teachers more than do other peers (Donaldson, 2011, In contrast, privilege-centric assignments place experienced teachers in classrooms with higher achieving students. School leaders may also use privilege-centric staffing to appease affluent parents and increase retention of their more experienced teachers. Although privilege-centric assignments may be counterproductive to the student experience, many schools employ this strategy despite principals' reports of using data to increase school equitability. The assignment of teachers to students and classes is presumed to be an entirely local (school-level) decision, with school leaders having substantial authority over this process. The findings of the preceding research underscore the importance of principals in this process, and yet we know little about the ability of leadership to interrupt systems of privilege and institute more equitable staffing arrangements. Because of this potential inconsistency between principals reporting that they make data-driven decisions and their actual assignment practices, we see the need for continued research in this area. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap within the literature by first examining the relationship between principals' reported data-driven decisions and teacher and student assignment strategies within schools, and then looking at the relationship between assignment practices and student learning. This study couples survey data from 213 Florida elementary and middle schools with 8 years of longitudinal, statewide data to address the following questions: (1) To what extent are privilege- and learning-centric assignment practices used within schools? Are these practices changing over time?; (2) How do privilege- and learning-centric assignments impact student-learning gains?; (3) What drives student-assignment practices--is this phenomenon embedded in the culture of a school or do principals dictate assignment practices?; and (4) How are principals' reported uses of data related to observed privilege- and learning-centric sorting?

Public pension systems in many U.S. states face large funding shortfalls. Movement toward defined contribution (DC) pension structures may reduce the likelihood of future shortfalls. We address some limitations of the existing literature by studying public-sector employees who are enrolled in either a defined benefit (DB) plan or hybrid DB-DC plan, and who at some points have been able to choose between these plans. We find little evidence that the introduction of the hybrid plan increased employee turnover and that turnover is significantly lower among those who transferred from the DB plan to the hybrid plan.

Scholars have developed a wide range of theories to explain both stability and change in policy subsystems. In recent years, a burgeoning literature has emerged that focuses on the application of network analysis in policy research, more formally known as Policy Network Analysis (PNA). This approach, while still developing, has great potential as an integrated theoretical framework that brings together multiple theories under a single conceptual paradigm. In this paper, the authors demonstrate how the insights of three other established policy theories--namely, the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), Punctuated-Equilibrium theory (PET), and the Policy Entrepreneur Model (PEM)--may be augmented under a synthesis theory of policy networks to provide a more conceptually coherent theory of policymaking that may be useful for explaining periods of both stability and change.

The two recently-filed New York lawsuits claiming that teacher tenure laws violate children's constitutional right to a "sound basic education" are finally dragging the long-obscure Section 3020-a of the state's Education Law into the spotlight. This attention is badly overdue because for decades § 3020-a has impeded efforts to ensure a minimum competence level among New York's teachers. Section 3020-a is a 3,000-word section of New York's Education Law, entitled "Disciplinary Procedures and Penalties," which mandates that tenured teachers can be dismissed only after just cause has been established through statutorily-prescribed administrative hearings. Teachers are evaluated in their schools under the Annual Professional Performance Review, the state's high-profile new evaluation system. But decisions on whether poorly-performing teachers stay or go are still made according to the decades-old § 3020-a law. This report presents analysis of the official decisions filed at the conclusion of § 3020-a hearings for New York City teachers from July 1, 1997 through June 30, 2007. It aims to shed light on the role and function of § 3020-a, to further public awareness of the law's impact on New York's schools, and to promote wider debate around how to fix it. The report presents Key findings, and concludes that while teachers are legally entitled to due process to protect them from unfair dismissal and unjustifiable accusations of inadequate performance, the current system goes far beyond that, prioritizing the rehabilitation of ineffective teachers over ensuring adequate teaching for children. Fixing the broken § 3020-a system is not "the" solution to fixing the schools, but it is a problem that urgently needs to be addressed. The report includes two appendices: (I) Obtaining § 3020-a Decisions and (II) Convictions & Penalties for § 3020-a Cases (July 1 1997-June 30, 2007).

Policymakers and educators alike increasing focus on faculty adoption of interactive teaching techniques as a way to improve undergraduate education. Yet, little empirical research exists that examines the processes whereby faculty make decisions about curriculum design and classroom teaching in real-world situations. In this study, I use the idea of the "problem space" from cognitive science to foreground the importance of actor-situation dynamics in shaping instructional decision making. Using data from a freelisting exercise and retrospective recall interviews, I describe the perceived affordances, planning strategies, and both the planned and enacted curricular artifacts for a group of 58 STEM faculty. Then, to examine these processes as they unfold in practice, I examine the cases of two physics instructors as they planned and taught specific classes. Results indicate the primacy of fixed affordances such as time, course content, and class size, and the influence of time constraints that lead to the dominant planning strategy of recycling and fine-tuning old lecture notes and PowerPoint slides. The paper also delves into the importance of these artifacts as cultural tools that mediate practice. The paper contributes a new approach to the study of instructional decision making while also providing actionable insights to improve practice. In particular, I recommend instituting departmental policies that require faculty to engage in brief, post-class and post-course reflection that results in minor updates to their curricular artifacts and will not require a significant time commitment.

A defining characteristic of current U.S. educational policy is the use of data to inform decisions about resource allocation, teacher hiring, and curriculum and instruction. Perhaps the biggest challenge to data-driven decision making (DDDM) is that data use alone does not automatically result in improved teaching and learning. Research indicates that translating raw data into useable information and actionable knowledge for teachers requires not only adequate technical and social supports, but also an awareness of how educators in real-world settings actually use information to make decisions. Yet, little is known about DDDM in higher education, in general, and how postsecondary faculty make sense of and use data in their instructional decision-making processes, in particular. In this paper, we use naturalistic decision-making theory to generate practice-based descriptions of how 59 STEM faculty at three large public research universities used data as part of their course planning. Interview transcripts and notes taken while observing planning meetings were analyzed using an inductive approach to content analysis. In practice, respondents used different types of data and other information obtained from, for example, student assessments, end-of-semester evaluations, and conversations with colleagues. Results indicate that faculty generally collect and analyze data in informal, ad hoc scenarios ungoverned by institutional policy. Exceptions include disciplines with accreditation pressures and team-taught courses where structured (and supported) opportunities exist for faculty to collect, analyze, and reflect upon data about student learning. Thus, while numeric data are clearly viewed by this population of faculty as the most rigorous, in practice, even those that use quantitative data also use other sources of information. These results suggest an opportunity for educational leaders to design policies and professional development initiatives that facilitate a more formal collection of and reflection on data by faculty. In pursuing such technical solutions, however, policymakers and educational leaders must carefully negotiate the tension between rigor and relevance, and learn from the challenges experienced in the K-12 sector regarding DDDM.

In this paper we consider more than three decades of research on teachers' unions in the United States. Focusing on unions' role in shaping education policy, we argue that collective bargaining and political organizing comprise the two central but distinct forms of influence at the district, state and national levels of decision-making. We note recent changes in state policy directly and indirectly affecting unions and union priorities. We argue that these changes may result in a variety of different conditions under which unions operate, and suggest that this variation represents fertile ground for new empirical analyses of union influence. Such work may in turn require a reconsideration of the extent of, and limitations to union power in altered educational landscapes.

Accountability in the private and public sectors of society has received significant attention in both research and practice, partly because of its importance, but also because it is challenging to define, measure and implement. The nature of accountability is complex, ambiguous and highly context-dependent. As related to postsecondary education (PSE), multiple stakeholders across the nation have been pushing for greater accountability for at least three decades. Various stakeholders, including elected officials at the national and state level seemingly obsessed with achieving a "one size fits all" kind of accountability system, continue to produce proposals and in some cases legislation, for our institutions of postsecondary education to provide, among other matters, evidence of improved degree production, cost control, and student learning. This paper identifies who some of the stakeholders are and provides a range of accountability initiatives underway since a Center for Studies in Higher Education report, "Accountability in Higher Education: A Public Agenda for Trust and Cultural Change," was presented in 2006, including a specific focus on California. [The 2006 report is available in ERIC at ED503070.]

Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide on the contentious issue of Affirmative Action, and specifically the use of race in admissions decisions in public universities. Despite differences in the details, seasoned veterans of affirmative action debates are experiencing déjà vu. In this case, Abigail Noel Fisher claims overt racial discrimination when the highly selective University of Texas at Austin (UT) rejected her freshman application in 2008. The Court's ruling could range from upholding the legal precedent of allowing race to be one of many factors in admissions; to a more narrow decision that rejects UT's particular use of race, but sets new limits on such decisions; to an outright rejection of using race in any form as one among many factors universities currently use in admissions. In this paper, I discuss the case and present a number of themes that should be considered by the Court and by the public, including problems with the notion of a "critical mass" of minority students; that arguments regarding academic merit are complex and nuanced; and that among highly selective public universities, where demand from many qualified students far exceeds the supply of admissions spots, admissions policies have arbitrary outcomes despite the best efforts to create rational and explainable admissions policies. As much as anything, the Fisher case is about the appropriate locus of admissions policy and decisions. The historical precedent, as reiterated by Justice Sandra Day O'Conner in the 2003 "Grutter" case, is that judgments related to the question of admissions, including the idea of sufficient critical mass of underrepresented students and factors that indicate future academic success, are, in the end, judgments that should remain within the Academy and which the courts should not infringe on without a compelling need to do so. There is no compelling need in the Fisher case. Simply agreeing to hear the case seems to indicate a willingness by the Court to overrule past precedent. Yet there is also a possibility that the Court's decision will be influenced by the prospect that a ruling against affirmative action will, for the first time, have meaning for selective private institutions, which have largely avoided scrutiny of their admissions practices and biases. As all of the justices are products of eastern elite private institutions, this could be an important consideration, although speculative.

For many students at community colleges, finding a path to degree completion is the equivalent of navigating a shapeless river on a dark night. While academic preparation and financial supports are critical components of student success, subtle institutional features may also play an important role. This paper thus reviews the evidence for what is called the "structure hypothesis: that community college students will be more likely to persist and succeed in programs that are tightly and consciously structured, with relatively little room for individuals to unintentionally deviate from paths toward completion, and with limited bureaucratic obstacles for students to circumnavigate". This review of the literature inside and outside of higher education suggests that the lack of structure in many community colleges is likely to result in less-than-optimal decisions by students about whether and how to persist toward a credential. Though there is no silver-bullet intervention to address this problem, this paper highlights several promising programs and suggests directions for future experimentation and research. (Contains 8 footnotes.)

This working paper is one in a series of projects initiated by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to improve knowledge for child care researchers and policy makers about parental child care decision making. In this paper, the authors identify three distinct conceptual frameworks for understanding child care decisions--a rational consumer choice framework, a heuristics and biases framework, and a social network framework--and review the major assumptions, contributions, and possible limitations of each of these frameworks. They then discuss an integrated conceptual model, the accommodation model that draws from each of these frameworks. The first three frameworks come primarily from the fields of economics, psychology, and sociology, respectively. It is the authors' sense that most research about child care decision making has been informed by the theories, assumptions, and empirical methods of one or more of these frameworks, either explicitly or implicitly, and they provide some examples and elaborate the basic tenets of each framework. The integrative accommodation model was first presented by Marcia Meyers and Lucy Jordan (2006). They develop and elaborate this model more fully here with explicit attention to its relation to the rational consumer choice framework, the heuristics and biases framework, and the social network frameworks. These frameworks are presented as complementary, rather than mutually exclusive. For a process as complex as parental child care decisions, each can provide a different and useful lens through which to understand unique aspects of the factors, processes and outcomes of parental child care decisions. When considered together, they believe they may inform one another and the development of more integrative models, such as the accommodation model presented here. It is the authors' hope that researchers working primarily within one of the conceptual frameworks discussed here will benefit from learning about other frameworks. In some cases, this may simply suggest additional or new variables to consider when specifying a particular model, while still working from the same conceptual framework. In other cases, it may result in integrative approaches that address multiple dimensions of the decision making process--dimensions that may not be as obvious when working within a single framework. In the concluding section the authors discuss some of the issues and the implications for future research. A goal of this paper is to advance knowledge that can inform public policy efforts. Given that the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) has an explicit goal of supporting parental choice for child care, it is critical that they expand and deepen everyone's knowledge about the processes through which parents make decisions and the consequences for the choices they make (Zaslow, Halle, Guzman, Lavelle, Keith, Berry, & Dent, 2006). The different perspectives offered by each of the three frameworks and the integrative accommodation model may help policy makers identify the policy and program levers that can prove important at different stages of the decision making process. (Contains 7 footnotes.)