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Conservative activism around the purported influence of Critical Race Theory (CRT) on K-12 education has swept the country in recent years. While others have documented the sources of these messages, how school districts have responded to these critiques has not yet been investigated. Drawing on research on how social media algorithms elevate polarizing information and activate emotions, we analyze public social media posts on school/district Facebook pages mentioning the phrase "critical race" to examine how educators address the claim of teaching CRT and how the local community responds. We use sentiment analysis to examine the emotions of these posts and how they are distributed across states. We also explore the sentiment of subsequent community reactions reflected in the comments of each post, including negative emotions such as anger and fear, and positive emotions such as trust. This study has implications for how school districts can help to stop cycles of fearful rhetoric and engage with stakeholders in ways that unite a school community around shared priorities.

Rapid adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the Race to the Top (RTTT) competition, and backlash around these policies created widespread uncertainty among state educational agencies (SEAs). SEAs may have not had a clear direction about how to support standards implementation in a new context, and therefore, may have looked to their professional networks, their geographic neighbors or other highly regarded SEAs, or other sources for information and resources to guide their decisions about where to send teachers for information about standards. Drawing on institutional theory (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) and isomorphism specifically (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), we posit that coercive forces (primarily due to RTTT application and CCSS status) as compared to mimetic and normative forces influenced the organizations to which SEAs turn for curriculum materials. Using Multiple Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure and a data set of over 2,000 state-provided resources for secondary English Language Arts teachers from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., we indeed found that coercive forces had a relationship with shared organizational ties, demonstrating that RTTT application and CCSS adoption influenced resource provision.

This study takes advantage of natural variation in alignment and accountability to analyze educator sensemaking of a complex policy environment. It describes how educators in two large, high-accountability districts in New York and Florida made sense of multiple policy changes, including new standards, curriculum, assessments, and teacher evaluation. Drawing on interviews with 68 individuals, observations of instruction and professional development, and policy documents, findings suggest that high policy alignment represents a fundamental yet insufficient condition for educators to perceive policies as coherent and coordinated. Accountability strength and policy sequence were important factors in educators' perceptions of coherence. In both districts, the pace and complexity of change contributed to policy overwhelm.

Many school leaders responded to the controversies over critical race theory with denial. That approach can backfire, according to Emily Hodge, Francesca López, and Joshua Rosenberg. They suggest proactive messaging, which can help prevent leaders from falling into the trap of reactively defending their practices and letting the direction of the conversation be guided by those with the most extreme views.

BackgroundPopulation-based estimates of the risk of breast cancer associated with germline pathogenic variants in cancer-predisposition genes are critically needed for risk assessment and management in women with inherited pathogenic variants.MethodsIn a population-based case-control study, we performed sequencing using a custom multigene amplicon-based panel to identify germline pathogenic variants in 28 cancer-predisposition genes among 32,247 women with breast cancer (case patients) and 32,544 unaffected women (controls) from population-based studies in the Cancer Risk Estimates Related to Susceptibility (CARRIERS) consortium. Associations between pathogenic variants in each gene and the risk of breast cancer were assessed.ResultsPathogenic variants in 12 established breast cancer-predisposition genes were detected in 5.03% of case patients and in 1.63% of controls. Pathogenic variants in BRCA1 and BRCA2 were associated with a high risk of breast cancer, with odds ratios of 7.62 (95% confidence interval [CI], 5.33 to 11.27) and 5.23 (95% CI, 4.09 to 6.77), respectively. Pathogenic variants in PALB2 were associated with a moderate risk (odds ratio, 3.83; 95% CI, 2.68 to 5.63). Pathogenic variants in BARD1, RAD51C, and RAD51D were associated with increased risks of estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer and triple-negative breast cancer, whereas pathogenic variants in ATM, CDH1, and CHEK2 were associated with an increased risk of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. Pathogenic variants in 16 candidate breast cancer-predisposition genes, including the c.657_661del5 founder pathogenic variant in NBN, were not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.ConclusionsThis study provides estimates of the prevalence and risk of breast cancer associated with pathogenic variants in known breast cancer-predisposition genes in the U.S. population. These estimates can inform cancer testing and screening and improve clinical management strategies for women in the general population with inherited pathogenic variants in these genes. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.).

BACKGROUND: Previous epidemiological studies found associations between exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and some cancer types. Many studies considered highly exposed populations, so relevance to less- exposed populations can be uncertain. Additionally, many studies considered only cancer site, not histology. OBJECTIVES: We conducted a case-cohort study within the American Cancer Society's prospective Cancer Prevention Study II (CPS-II) LifeLink cohort to examine associations between PFAS exposure and risk of selected cancers, considering histologic subtypes. METHODS: Serum specimens were collected from cohort participants during the period 1998-2001. This study included a subcohort (500 men, 499 women) randomly selected from participants without prior cancer diagnoses at serum collection, and all participants with incident (after serum collection) first cancers of the breast (females only, n = 786), bladder (n = 401), kidney (n = 158), pancreas (n = 172), prostate (males only, n = 1,610) or hematologic system (n = 635). PFAS concentrations [perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS), and perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA)] were measured in stored serum. We assessed associations between PFAS concentrations and incident cancers, by site and histologic subtype, using multivariable Cox proportional hazards models stratified by sex and controlling for age and year at blood draw, education, race/ethnicity, smoking, and alcohol use. RESULTS: Serum PFOA concentrations were positively associated with renal cell carcinoma of the kidney among women [hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) per PFOA doubling: 1.54 (95% CI: 1.05, 2.26)] but not men. Among men, we observed a positive association between PFHxS concentrations and chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma [CLL/SLL, HR and 95% CI per PFHxS doubling: 1.34 (95% CI: 1.02, 1.75)]. We observed some heterogeneity of associations by histologic subtype within sites. Discussion: This study supports the previously observed association between PFOA and renal cell carcinoma among women and suggests an association between PFHxS and CLL/SLL among men. Consideration of histologic subtypes might be important in future studies of PFAS- cancer associations. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP13174, Introduction Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are man-made chemicals used since the 1940s in many consumer products such as oil-, water-, and stain-resistant coatings for fabrics, leather, carpets, and food [...]

This study examines how a large metropolitan district presented the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to its teachers, how secondary literacy teachers took up those messages, and the conceptions of equity that were represented at the district and teacher levels. This study draws on sensemaking theory and conceptions of equity in conjunction with qualitative case study methods. Data include interviews with 24 individuals involved in middle school literacy instruction at the school and district levels and documents related to curriculum and professional development. Findings indicate that CCSS trainings at the district level had some reference to equity, defined as treating students the same way (for example, exposing "all students" to complex texts). Teachers expressed similar, though limited, policy messages around the importance of providing equal instructional treatment. This study suggests that district leaders consider available conceptions of equity in messages around reform for meaningful improvement of educational opportunities.

There has been a recent major upsurge in the concerns about reproducibility in many areas of science. Within the neuroimaging domain, one approach is to promote reproducibility is to target the re-executability of the publication. The information supporting such re-executability can enable the detailed examination of how an initial finding generalizes across changes in the processing approach, and sampled population, in a controlled scientific fashion. ReproNim: A Center for Reproducible Neuroimaging Computation is a recently funded initiative that seeks to facilitate the "last mile" implementations of core re-executability tools in order to reduce the accessibility barrier and increase adoption of standards and best practices at the neuroimaging research laboratory level. In this report, we summarize the overall approach and tools we have developed in this domain.

Teaching for justice is more urgent than ever, as resistance to classroom discussions of race and inequality is widespread in the United States. In challenging times like these, English language [...]

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were released in 2010 with an appendix that claimed to outline a research-based case for the standards. In this article, we examine the CCSS Appendix A as a case of research use in policy by analyzing the type of sources the document cites, the accuracy of its claim-citation relationships, and the frames its authors used in arguing for the standards. The 59 claims in Appendix A were supported by 112 citations to 97 unique sources. Reports and peer-reviewed articles were the most commonly cited sources, but about a third of claims made did not have a close relationship to the cited material. This analysis raises questions about the use of research evidence in influential policy documents, suggesting that critical consumers scrutinize the content of policy documents and their relationship to the research used to authorize their claims.

Although research suggests that teachers turn to their state departments of education for curricular resources, little is known about the resources teachers find on state websites and the recommendations these resources make, especially for teaching writing. We analyze state-provided resources focused on writing (n = 123) for their type, standard(s), and sponsor(s). We also analyze a subset of 40 resources to describe the epistemologies about writing instruction reflected in these resources. We find that just over half of states provide writing resources, that literacy and policy organizations are named about the same number of times as resource sponsors, and that resources tend to foreground structural and ideational epistemologies over social practice. This work helps identify the extent to which states focus on writing instruction, the types of resources states are providing, and the visions of writing instruction communicated through state-provided curricular resources.

Background: A common set of standards enables the sharing of curricular and professional development resources across state lines. In a previous study of state-provided standards resources for English/language arts, we identified the number of state educational agencies linking to different organizations' resources. We then identified the 10 most influential organizations; in other words, the organizations to which the highest number of states had linked as resource sponsors. However, little is known about the content of the resources from the most influential organizations. Purpose: The first goal of this study was to describe the state-provided resources sponsored by the 10 most influential organizations, including the standards and topics addressed. The second goal was to identify the instructional messages about close reading present in those resources, as well as how consistent those messages were across resources and across organizations. Research Design: This study used qualitative coding and descriptive analyses to identify standards and topics included in 177 individual resources in the form of articles, curriculum guidelines, instructional aids, professional development, and student work. We utilized social network analysis to visualize the connections between topics the resources addressed and their organizational sponsors. Then, we used qualitative coding and social network analysis to identify and visualize messages about close reading from a smaller set of resources. Conclusions: This study finds that resources emphasized standards focused on reading closely and academic vocabulary. Resources focused most heavily on the topics of reading informational text, complex text and academic language, and reading literature; topics that were less represented included special student populations, curricular design, and narrative writing. This study also finds that the resources' positions on how teachers should enact close reading diverged around the extent to which historical or background knowledge ought to be allowed to inform students' reading. This work adds to a small but growing body of research applying social network analysis to visualize the relationships between organizations and ideas. We recommend that teachers, as well as state and district leaders, who are searching for helpful resources turn to literacy organizations like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Literacy Association as organizations that are concerned with the profession as a whole rather than with one particular standards policy and may therefore present a broader and more integrated view of ELA instruction.

This manuscript explores how the changing policy context of common standards may have influenced the provision of curriculum materials in the United States. Many educational reforms do little to change the nature of classroom instruction, and prior research has argued that this constancy is, at least in part, due to the common use of instructional materials from a small set of large publishing companies (Rowan in J Educ Change 3(3-4):283-314, 2002). However, common standards have been in place in many states since 2010, creating the potential for states to create and share curricular materials with each other, as well as for new organizations to enter the curriculum marketplace. Instructional materials provide a direct link to the instructional core, and recent research demonstrates that individual teachers, schools, and districts are increasingly selecting instructional materials from a variety of online sources, including databases of open educational resources and open-access, yearlong curricula. These materials are created, curated, and/or disseminated by state education agencies, nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, and education employees. In this essay, we describe this new context and provide several cases of the shifting landscape of supply and demand related to curriculum materials. Various configurations of organizations are taking innovative approaches to providing curriculum materials in the context of the Common Core State Standards, as well as to influencing the materials school systems adopt. Finally, we discuss the implications of this backdrop for curriculum policy and practice.