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The three terms comprising the Obama and Trump presidencies provide an opportunity to understand the evolution of race-conscious education policy in an increasingly multiracial, unequal, and divided society. Through document review and interviews with civil rights lawyers, government officials, congressional staffers, and intermediary organization personnel, we sought to understand how Obama officials envisioned and changed the role of the federal government in fostering K-12 race-conscious educational policies and what mechanisms they used to advance priorities. We also explored changes Trump administration officials made to federal civil rights policies and through which institutional means. Our findings reveal through-lines between past and present political agendas and the methods for enactment. Obama's interagency efforts to reinvigorate civil rights oversight and enforcement in education harkened back to the mid-1960s era of bipartisan cooperation around school desegregation. Yet the decades-long legal and policy retrenchment against civil rights advances made in the 1960s constrained further progress. Trump's administration advocated for the privatization of public education through increased choice and opposed race-consciousness in education law and policy. The reshaping of the federal judiciary under Trump presents challenges for race-consciousness in the law for years to come. Recognizing these consistent through-lines and constraints will be essential for advocates and policymakers going forward.

Recent trends in education reform have brought renewed attention to performance character strengths such as grit, growth mindsets, and self-control. In this article, we explore how secondary teachers (Grades 5-12) in a variety of school types understood character education generally, and performance character education specifically. Research questions included how teachers defined the components of character (i.e., what strengths, values, and habits were emphasized), why they were important, and how they taught them. The findings reveal diverse understandings of character. Study participants varied in the extent to which they highlighted moral, civic, or performance character strengths and whether they viewed character primarily as an intrinsic or instrumental good. While participants generally agreed on the importance of teaching strengths like grit and growth mindsets, they brought markedly different levels of enthusiasm to this work and expressed different ideas about the role of behavioral controls in supporting or undermining performance character goals. Reflecting on our findings, we consider how definitions of character map onto beliefs about behavioral control, explore theoretical and practical tensions between character development and behavioral control, and raise questions for further research in character education and teacher education.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education made grants to eleven school districts under the Technical Assistance for Student Assignment Plans (TASAP) program. The impetus for the program came from the Council of Great City Schools, which was concerned that school districts would respond to a recent Supreme Court decision by dismantling policies with integrative aims. We analyze the design of the TASAP program, its implementation by the USED, and how the grantee districts used the funds, and find that TASAP's effects were mixed. Five districts represented examples of "successful" implementation, using the grant funds in ways that prioritized diversity. Six demonstrated "subverted" implementation, using funds in ways that met local needs but moved away from the diversity goal.

In 2013, the Boston Public Schools (BPS) adopted the Home-Based Student Assignment Policy (HBSAP), which replaced elementary and middle-school choice within three large geographic zones with an algorithm that generates a choice basket of schools for each address based on proximity to the student's home and a guarantee that all baskets will include at least four schools in the top two state test-score quartiles of BPS. Adoption of HBSAP broke a long political stalemate. BPS invited broad public participation in the process but also shaped the agenda to favor what middle-class neighborhood participants wanted. The process obscured the zero-sum politics of student assignment by permitting current students and their younger siblings to continue in their schools after adoption of HBSAP and because the algorithm does not produce winners and losers as obviously as geographically defined student assignment policies do. BPS has not produced a comprehensive evaluation of HBSAP's effects, but early evidence suggests that it is making enclave schools more white.

Increasing numbers of states have incorporated measures of students' academic growth into their data and accountability policies. Measuring growth is a statistically complicated task and complex growth measures can be easy to misinterpret. This paper reports on a survey of 317 Massachusetts principals' understanding of the Student Growth Percentile (SGP), a popular growth model. The survey was designed to produce information about how Massachusetts principals use and interpret the SGP and the extent to which they have misconceptions about what SGPs mean. The survey reveals some common misconceptions, often based on confusion about the differences between the norm-referenced SGP and the state's criterion-referenced assessments. We conclude that there is a risk that principals will make inappropriate decisions based on SGPs. Because of their central role in school improvement, principals need better opportunities to learn about how to use SGP and other growth model data.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education distributed $2,500,000 via a competitive grant program, the Technical Assistance for Student Assignment Plans, to 11 school districts. The grants and their local effects provide an opportunity to examine the new politics of diversity in public education. Participants cited a wide range of conceptions of diversity, most of which were race-neutral. Some districts enacted policies deemphasizing their original diversity goals. Even in Technical Assistance for Student Assignment Plans (TASAP) districts, whose leaders presumably value diversity, diversity was not always a compelling goal when competing with priorities such as fiscal austerity, school improvement, and neighborhood school demands. Future federal efforts to increase students' exposure to diverse peers should recognize that local conditions might create contrary political pressures for local policymakers.

Many school districts have recently revised, or tried to revise, their policies for assigning students to schools, because the legal and political status of racial and other kinds of diversity is uncertain, and the districts are facing fiscal austerity. This article presents case studies of politics and student assignment policy in three large school districts: Boston, Massachusetts; Wake County (Raleigh), North Carolina; and Jefferson County (Louisville), Kentucky. In all three districts, there has been pressure to change student-assignment policies in ways that respond to the priorities of White and middle-class populations, with the potential to worsen the options available to students of color. Our case studies reinforce the criticisms of race-neutral politics and policy that have been made by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and others. Race-neutral politics during fiscal retrenchment tends to reframe privilege as common sense and to obscure some students' structural disadvantages.

This paper looks at works of various authors on the supervision of doctoral students and their expectations. We aim through reading, experience and reflection to offer a logical framework that will aid in the better understanding of the process for those new to supervision. The two authors draw upon experience as new supervisors via the use of case studies applied to current literature, and identify some of the pitfalls they may come into contact with. To this end, the models and works of Hockey, Argyris, and Lewin are applied.

Since the 1990s, a growing number of urban schools have gained attention for their distinctive approach to academics and character education. These schools, most of them charters, share the stated goals of closing the racial achievement gap and preparing all of their students for college. In this article, we identify common elements of their approach, which we, following others, label as "new paternalism." We describe the unique features of new-paternalist urban schools and discuss potential pitfalls of new paternalism that have been absent from mass media coverage of them. We argue that new paternalism appeals to a wide range of diverse political constituencies; however, idealized media accounts of these schools likely overestimate their power to close achievement gaps and produce mobility for urban youth. Although we question the optimism of several media accounts, we argue that either advocacy or criticism of new paternalist schools ought to rest on empirical research conducted in and on them. Our central purpose is to outline an agenda for research on the long-term impact of new paternalist schools and their ability to address issues related to educational equal opportunity.

Like many other states, Massachusetts enacted numerous changes to teacher certification policy during the 1980s and 1990s. During the summer of 1998, the state legislature and Department of Education made two especially significant changes: a signing bonus of U.S. $20,000 for an elite group of new teachers, and a state-funded alternative certification program. Alternative certification had been part of state policy for years prior to 1998 but had never been widely implemented. The signing bonus was a new idea. Drawing on the literature on policy formation, implementation, and termination, this article analyzes the process by which the signing bonus was enacted, and how it contributed to creation of the state alternative certification program. Ironically, although alternative certification was not widely implemented until it was coupled with the signing bonus, the alternative certification program survived a state budget crisis that led to termination of the signing bonus.

This article examines barriers to college persistence for low-income, single mothers at a public university in the Northeast, and the strategies the women used in their efforts to overcome the barriers. Data for the study were drawn from in-depth interviews with 14 current and former university students. The women's strategies and resources for persistence included faith in the benefits of a college education, building of social networks among students, faculty relationships, university services such as child care and financial aid, strategic compliance with TANF requirements, choice of more flexible academic programs, and support from family and community. The article concludes with the recommendations for policies to enhance single parents' college persistence. (Contains 2 tables.)