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This article examines the administrative and bureaucratic barriers faced by trans and nonbinary high-school students in the School District of Philadelphia. Despite strong gender-inclusive policies like the district's Policy 252, student interviews, first-hand observation, and document analysis reveal a variety of stress points that trans and nonbinary students still regularly face. This paper explores those "sticking points" individually and in detail through student experiences, from name and pronoun changes to bathrooms and written records, encouraging greater awareness among classroom teachers and school staff. Ultimately, the persistence of student challenges even amidst supportive policy -- itself far from a guarantee in many school districts -- suggests that gender inclusivity is not subject to single solutions, but rather requires care-filled consideration of stress points in our own distinct and ever-evolving contexts.

Physical restraint is an emergency procedure restricting the movement of an individual and is used in events where students pose an imminent threat of physical harm to themselves or others. Students with disabilities are subjected to these procedures seven times more than typically developing students. Over the past decade, there has been substantial policy reform on the use of restraint; however, policies still vary across the country. Additionally, research on experiences of the use of and policy on restraint in school settings is incredibly limited. The current study expands the body of literature by investigating teachers' experiences, and factors associated with experiences, of restraint events and district policy utilizing a multiple-methods survey design. One hundred eighty Prekindergarten through 12th-grade teachers working in a variety of school settings across the country completed a self-report online survey. Results revealed variability in experiences of restraint events and school district policies. While most participants reported following the district policy as written, level of education significantly impacted teachers' adhering to the policy, wherein those with higher levels of education were less likely to follow the policy. Implications for policy and practice are provided.

The article explores the relationship between education policy change and policy transfer, focusing on Georgia's School Board of Trustees. It analyzes how Western practices have been implemented in the education policies of post-Soviet countries. To achieve this, the article utilizes instrumental case studies and in-depth interviews. It views policy transfer as a tool of education policy change while integrating it with an advocacy coalition framework. The study indicates that advocacy coalitions transform into transfer networks, and their approach is to replicate or emulate foreign experiences. The article also poses new research questions, enabling researchers to build on and scrutinize the proposed assumptions and concentrate on post-Soviet education policy transformation.

Purpose: The purpose of this systematic literature review is to examine policy and practice recommendations, along with calls for future research, aimed at addressing food insecurity for community colleges across the U.S. Argument/Proposed Model: This article will provide a detailed methodology for the systematic literature review, as well as the findings gathered from a range of peer-reviewed articles on this topic. The authors analyzed six significant themes that surfaced from the current literature related to policy and practice at the federal, state, local, and institutional levels. Conclusions/Contributions: Six chief themes are discussed in-depth, including but not limited to: important tools and approaches for marketing and communications, data-driven decision-making, and the augmentation of food support with other public benefits and institutional resources. These thematic findings address the issue of food insecurity on community college campuses, and also offer a range of techniques and areas for consideration. This systematic literature review offers a compilation of policy and practice recommendations steeped in actionable strategies for researchers, policymakers, campus leaders, and practitioners alike. The strategies can be implemented and/or tailored to meet the needs and nuances of any community college population.

School districts are traditionally subject to a variety of state regulations on educational inputs. Absent regulations, policymakers fear that districts will make inappropriate decisions. However, it is also possible that regulations hinder schools from optimizing student learning. This article tests the salience of these hypotheses by estimating the impact of the Texas District of Innovation statute, which allows districts to opt out of regulations on inputs like teacher certification and class sizes. Using web-scraped implementation data, I document widespread exemptions and variation in regulatory preferences. However, staggered difference-in-differences analyses demonstrate a limited impact of deregulation within 4 years, suggesting that deregulation alone is a relatively weak lever for spurring innovation and changing the state of education.

School rezoning is the process of drawing and redrawing school attendance boundaries (SABs). However, studies explicitly focused on changing SABs through rezoning or other mechanisms are spread across multiple bodies of literature. Rezoning is also a politically contentious issue governed by local school boards, tying it to conceptual work on the politics of education. This systematic literature review on school rezoning brings together fragmented but related bodies of work to develop a comprehensive understanding of the rationales for school rezoning, the strategies and processes underlying it, and its associated outcomes. Grounded in a contested legal landscape, findings indicate that rezoning involves overlapping and interacting policy issues as well as multiple stakeholders that complicate the theory of action. Limitations in prevailing student assignment plans influence the degree to which rezoning can disrupt racial and socioeconomic segregation in schools. This review highlights the need to reconceptualize rezoning as a transformative tool, rather than one that replicates (or worsens) systems of educational inequity.

What should an educational leader passionate about all students do when they are told educational equity is not allowed in their district? What does a director of Indigenous education do when funding earmarked for Indigenous students is redirected to other school priorities? What should be done when the very teachers who need training in cultural responsivity are the strongest in opposition to learning about what makes their students unique and how they can adjust their instruction to meet their students' needs? This paper examines how three Indigenous educational leaders are forced to balance Eurocentric district mandates and white fragility with the strengths and conditions of the Indigenous students and communities they serve. The authors highlight efforts for readers to gain a better understanding of the current state of public education for Indigenous students, families, and communities.

Since 2017, hostile anti-LGBTQ+ educational bills rapidly expanded. Using traditional and critical policy analysis across three Midwestern states, we examine (1) whether state and local policymakers (n = 60) adopted trans-inclusive protections aligned with the 2017 federal "Whitaker" ruling, (2) the spread and scope of state and local educational policies concerning LGBTQ+ people, and (3) relationships between LGBTQ and critical race theory (CRT) curricular bills. We find policy erasure in states without pre-"Whitaker" gender-inclusive nondiscrimination laws and expanded efforts to ban LGBTQ+ students from educational opportunities, spaces, and curriculum. LGBTQ+ and CRT curricular bans overlapped. We discuss the implications of policymakers leaning into exclusion over gender reforms.

Background or Context: Public school library book challenges have garnered ample media attention in recent years as many school districts and advocacy organizations have reported record numbers of book challenges. Book challenges are not a new phenomenon, historically speaking, but they have often illuminated values clashes in communities and raise questions about the rights and freedoms of public school students. Judicial rulings and school district policies that address book challenges could provide insights for many members of school communities (including, but not limited to, school board members, students, parents, and teachers) as they experience challenges, but these aspects of the legal record and their influence on responses to book challenges remains underexamined in scholarship. Purpose, Objective, Research Question, or Focus of Study: The 1982 Supreme Court case "Island Trees School District v. Pico" remains the lasting judicial precedent for interpreting public school students' First Amendment rights as they interact with school library books. We examine the extent to which school district book challenge policies align with court precedent set in "Pico" (1982) and the implications for students' rights and democratic participation during book challenges. Research Design: Drawing on elements of the law and society framework as well as political analysis categories, this study uses qualitative methods to illuminate specific elements of district policies that govern book challenges. Specifically, we examine 29 policies in school districts that experienced a publicly reported book challenge between 2017 and 2021 to understand relationships between school district book challenge policies and the "Pico" (1982) precedent. Conclusions or Recommendations: Our findings reveal ample space between judicial rulings and school district policies we examine. In fact, we find a broader array of relevant actors in book challenge processes than conceived by the courts and raise implications for students' constitutional rights and protections related to who policies indicate may or must be involved in these processes, the settings in which book challenge decisions are made, and the limited roles for public involvement during school library book challenges.

Numerous states have attempted to enact sweeping curricular bans targeting Critical Race Theory (CRT) to prevent educators from teaching content that challenges the white-Eurocentric curriculum of American schooling. In this paper, we build on arguments that curricular bans are not new to education, nor is the resistance enacted by educators to curricular bans. Through centering how educators in three different states are navigating the various tightness of spaces in their resistance, we look to provide a pathway forward for those looking to enact resistance to current (and future) curricular bans. This analysis contributes to how teacher educators and educational foundations scholars can think about teacher activism and resistances as pedagogical praxis.

What characteristics of space predict exclusive policies? Intuitively, socioeconomically exclusive spaces - such as wealthy urban centers in China - would also be exclusive in welfare provision. Drawing from cross-district comparisons within a Chinese metropolis, we identify a counterintuitive pattern where the urban center had easier migrant school access policies than the urban fringe. This pattern has existed in both the 2010s and 2020s, surviving a major school admissions policy reform. We call this pattern the inclusion paradox. The inclusion paradox can be attributed to two causes: a compartmentalization of school access along urban district boundaries, and a tendency of fringe districts to carry more migrant population with less fiscal capacity. As a result of the inclusion paradox, migrant children were more likely excluded from school access precisely where they were more likely to live. The inclusion paradox implies that policy exclusion and spatial exclusion substitute each other, a pattern that brings migrant school access in China in conversation with unequal school access in other contexts.

All students have the right to be safe at school. Regulations mandate that schools must establish procedures to ensure the safety of all students during emergency situations. Twenty years ago, a Midwestern school district created Individualized Emergency Evacuation Plans (IEEPs) to address unique safety needs of students with disabilities. A mixed methods design program evaluation was conducted to study its effectiveness. It examined the extent to which these practices align with the needs of students with disabilities, and what changes might be implemented to improve the program. Participants were multiple levels of District personnel. Data were collected using a quantitative online survey and qualitative individual semi-structured interviews and two focus groups. Most survey participants felt that current plans meet needs of students with disabilities; however, the plans could be updated to better support student safety. Interview analyses produced three emergent themes: We will do whatever it takes; There is always room for improvement; and "It might be helpful to … ." District Q continues to implement some practices from the original framework of the Individualized Emergency Evacuation Plans. The program evaluation produced suggestions for more effectively and efficiently meeting the safety needs of students with disabilities in emergency situations.

In recent years, policymakers and scholars argued that state education agencies (SEAs) should move away from simply acting as compliance monitors and take on more prominent roles as providers of technical support to schools and school districts. Scholars find that SEAs have struggled to do so, yet there is little empirical work to explain what SEAs do or why they struggle. This study looks at Michigan's Partnership model for School and District turnaround, which began in 2018 and includes the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) as a formal partner in building the capacity of school districts to craft and meet ambitious student learning targets. Analyzing interviews with MDE "liaisons" and turnaround leaders, I find that Partnership leaders reported a deeper sense of trust with the SEA compared to prior years because liaisons were more focused on support and understanding individual school/district contexts. However, supports were generally "passive" (e.g., sending standardized emails with resources/links; helping navigate compliance issues) rather than targeted technical assistance that helped Partnership leaders build capacity. I argue that this was in part due to the SEA's conflicting role as both accountability monitor and technical assistance provider. I show how SEAs navigated this dynamic and provide suggestions for how SEAs can balance district autonomy with support through trust building, ideas of "controlled autonomy," and "flexible specificity," which recommends highly specific technical guidance paired with ongoing processes of feedback and experimentation from implementers so that guidance matches context.

This paper presents results from a survey of parents of school age children in Louisiana to understand their knowledge of and attitudes toward sex education. Louisiana adolescents rank amongst the highest in the nation for teen births and sexually transmitted infections. Louisiana does not require instruction in sex education at any grade level. Survey results provide clear evidence that the majority of Louisiana parents support sex education in school curricula that emphasizes abstinence but also provides broad information on sexual health. With continued efforts to engage local communities statewide, these data stand to redirect state and local level policy making.

This comparative case study explores how 18 state education agencies (SEAs) support school districts in advancing standards-based elementary science reform. We identify how SEAs understand their work in advancing elementary science reform and describe how SEAs sought to engage districts in bridging from standards to classroom practice. Based on our analysis, we argue that the school subject is a critical explanatory variable in understanding SEA efforts to support standards implementation and SEAs lean on a resource-based approach for instructional policy implementation. This study contributes to the growing research base on the role of state policy in supporting standards implementation.

Differentiation is an instructional practice teachers employ to modify their classroom content, process, and products based on student readiness, interest, and learning profile. Many school districts recognize the benefits of differentiated instruction and thus mandate allotted classroom time for its implementation. In this article, we investigate how teachers in one such district resolved differentiation policy to practice in a high-stakes testing environment. We found, during the designated time for differentiation, teachers regularly remediated small groups but did not similarly address the academic needs of advanced students, thus not enacting the disciplinary standard for differentiation. We suggest teachers are recoupling practice and policy but misaligning it to the disciplinary definition of differentiation, which we contend has broader implications for instructional policymaking.

COVID-19 school closures disrupted special education. In Fall 2020, districts sought to reopen schools, recover from the shocks of the pandemic, and implement special education to serve students with disabilities. Using policy document data from the United States' 25 largest school districts, we surface patterns in how districts communicated problems and solutions related to special education for the 2020-21 school year. Drawing on concepts from framing theory, we analyzed messaging on special education embedded in 71 district policy documents. Specifically, we assessed the nature and foci of 520 special education policy frames. The 520 frames contained ideas on problems and solutions regarding special education. Results indicate that this set of districts foregrounded how to implement the compliance and intervention models of special education in their formal communication but devoted less attention to the equity model of special education. Districts rarely defined underlying problems in special education implementation amid pandemic schooling. We discuss potential consequences of these patterns in messaging on special education. Finally, we present evidence- and theory-based recommendations for policy, practice, and scholarship on the implementation of special education with attention to recuperating from pandemic-related impacts.

Initiatives to integrate technology into teaching and learning often lack a long-term follow up to gauge if those same initiatives set the stage for teachers to easily adopt the next stage of learning technologies. Using the ten-year anniversary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Classroom for the Future grant, where $200 million were allocated for a statewide technology initiative to promote 21st century teaching and learning, this study's aim was to understand what type of barriers in-service teachers perceive regarding the use of social media communication technologies as a legitimate pedagogical tool. Participants were selected using a multi-stage cluster sampling method to ensure rural, town, suburban, and urban teachers were represented. Using the action areas suggested by Ashton et al. (1999) and Bonk et al. (2001), pedagogical, social, managerial, and technical; a typological analysis was done using the responses of 140 Pennsylvania secondary teachers' stated discouragements. During the analysis a fifth typology, internal school systems, emerged from the data. The most prominent categories were technological and managerial followed by social, internal school systems, and pedagogical. Ultimately, teachers feel that social media communication technologies are not viewed as legitimate teaching tools. To help teachers feel social media communication technologies are legitimate teaching tools policymakers and school leaders are encouraged to create an atmosphere that promotes administrative support, schedules that incorporate planning, and funds to provide ongoing training for teachers to stay current with technologies.

Black students with disabilities in Maple Cove School District were three times more likely to lose instructional days due to exclusionary disciplinary action than their peers without disabilities. A qualitative inquiry approach, in the form of a case study was used to determine principals' perspectives about factors that may impact discipline disproportionality. Student disciplinary records were examined to verify disproportionality and investigate patterns and categories related to students with and without disabilities being issued Office Discipline Referrals (ODRs). Interviews were conducted with building level administrators (principals and assistant principals) and their responses recorded and open coded to determine themes and develop ideas about how to address the inequities in how students are disciplined.

The national policy context regarding transgender students' rights has been volatile in recent years. New York State's Department of Education has a transgender policy in place, yet local school districts around New York State do not. This qualitative case study examined how district and school staff perceived the knowledge and effectiveness of transgender policies. Findings suggest a policy breakdown created by key stakeholders at both the district and school levels that leave transgender students vulnerable.

This study explored the role of school superintendents and board of education trustees in closing the achievement gap, which can be defined as "the disparity in academic performance between groups of students" (Muhammad, 2015, p. 14). District leaders (superintendents and school boards) set the priorities and policies in their school systems and have the power to promote or thwart educational equity (Skrla et al., 2009). The purpose of this qualitative study was to highlight effective practices of superintendents and school boards that have prioritized closing achievement gaps and have succeeded in narrowing them. This study involved four case studies and made use of interviews, observations, and document review. The data revealed that the most formidable challenges to closing achievement gaps were increasingly diverse student needs, stakeholders' deficit-thinking about students, lack of family engagement, and financial obstacles. To overcome those challenges, the researcher found that superintendents used various strategies, including setting a vision for equity at the district level, using data to drive decision-making, hiring quality teachers and leaders, using district funds resourcefully, providing rigorous curricula for students, and creating innovative academic and non-academic programs for students. Although there is academic literature on the challenges that school superintendents face in closing achievement gaps and the strategies that they have used to overcome them, there is a lack of research on how superintendents and their school boards collaborate to narrow achievement gaps. The aim of the study was to address that gap in the literature. Data revealed that district leaders collaborated to narrow gaps by setting district visions, goals, and policies, sharing information, and partnering on the budgeting and hiring processes.

Minority students are suspended at a disproportionately higher rate compared with others. To reduce racial suspension gaps, four California school districts banned schools from suspending students for willful defiance, a category consisting of relatively minor disruptive offenses. I evaluate the impact of these policies on high school student discipline outcomes using a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits the temporal variation in the enactment of these policies across school districts. The results suggest that while these policies decreased willful defiance out-of-school suspension rates by around 69%, they did not reduce overall out-of-school suspension rates. In fact, the policies significantly increased out-of-school suspension rates among Black students, particularly in schools with a small share of Black teachers. Taken together, the results suggest that the willful defiance suspension bans failed to address implicit and explicit biases in California schools.

School rezoning, or redistricting, is the process by which school boards draw and redraw school attendance boundaries. These boundaries are key drivers of racial and economic school segregation but can also work to ameliorate it. Using a critical orientation to narrative policy analysis, this study examined the cultural politics of race and whiteness in an urban school district undergoing school rezoning. Drawing on semistructured interviews with 15 school leaders and community stakeholders, findings provide a lens for school leaders and policymakers to better understand how and to what extent race is imposed in school attendance boundary decisions. Our findings expand current literature on school rezoning by shedding new light on racial narratives embedded within the political process. We conclude with policy and practice implications.

This descriptive analysis of policy content examined local school district policies on physical restraint and seclusion in one Midwestern state that did not have state legislation on these topics to determine whether districts had policies and, if so, whether their content included recommended principles from the U.S. Department of Education. No previous research has addressed district policies. A maximum variation sample of 90 districts was examined to determine whether policies were in place, whether recommended principles were included, and whether policies varied based on student enrollment. Although almost all districts had policies, many of the federally recommended principles were not addressed across the sample and less than 10% of the district policies indicated that these procedures should only be used in the case of imminent danger of serious injury to self or others. District enrollment size did not affect policy, but the substance of the policy was determined by the districts' policy source from advising attorneys.

Gifted education policies vary across the United States. Previous studies have demonstrated a disconnect between these policies at state and district levels, but alignment of school-level practices with state and/or district policies is unknown. To further examine these relationships, we examined via qualitative document analysis state and district-level gifted policies and district and school-level reported practices in two states' gifted services. Although state and district policies reflected fairly close alignment with recommended practices, district and school reported practices reflected only partial alignment. We discuss implications of these findings for gifted programs and policy at the state and local levels.

Purpose: We describe charter school leaders' beliefs and practices as they relate to student transportation in three choice-rich cities. Research Methods/Approach: Data come from a multiple comparative case study of district and charter school leaders' perceptions and implementation of transportation policies in three choice-rich cities with distinct student-transportation requirements, geographic landscapes, and school-choice markets. We analyzed public documentation and individual, semistructured interviews with 26 representatives from charter schools, authorizing agencies, and district administrators across the case sites. Findings: Even with local policies requiring universal transportation in two of our three case cities, charter school leaders did not foreground equity goals in school access when discussing transportation or did so in relatively weak ways. In contrast, all three cities showed evidence of market-based principles that, at times, were coupled with state and community values to bolster the legitimacy of market-driven transportation practices at the expense of equity goals. Despite the prevalence of the market-based values, we argue that local regulations and structures can support equitable transportation practices. Implications: Our results highlight the strong influence of market-based principles on charter school practices for student transportation. Without equitable provision of student transportation, the theory of change of school choice--that families will have equal access to schools--is challenged. State- and district-level regulations (such as transportation mandates) and structures (such as public transit and universal enrollment systems) can elevate goals of equity for charter school leaders or help manage competitive forces that compel charter schools to prioritize market-based goals over equity.

The impact of chronic absenteeism is devastating nationally as it can lead to poor academic achievement, increased dropout rates, and the school-to-prison pipeline (Balfanz & Cornfeld, 2016). The purpose of this program evaluation is to examine the attendance program at large suburban high school in the southeast United States. This program evaluation uses longitudinal data over six years, retrieved from the Department of Education's website, to show the impact of the attendance program on rates of absenteeism, specifically the percentage of students that were absent 21 or more days. Findings show that the chronic absenteeism prevention program was successful as it lowered the percentage of students that were absent 21 or more days from 13.42% in the 2013-2014 academic school year to 5.00% in the 2018-2019 academic school year.

I examine a unique facet of Japan's public education system: "jinji idou," a mandatory teacher rotation system governed by the prefectural board of education where teachers are systematically transferred to other schools throughout their careers to appropriately staff schools, facilitate varied career paths, and identify future leaders for administrative roles. Although not a formal goal, this centralized system may also produce a more equal distribution of teacher quality across schools compared to the de centralized teacher labor market found in private schools. Because this system is present in public schools and absent in private schools, comparing sector differences offers a look at its impact on teacher quality distribution. Using a sample of 1,456 teachers nested in 49 schools, private vs. public group comparison tests indicate that, for most of the teacher quality traits examined, the public sector distributes teachers more equitably. Furthermore, the public sector has higher mean levels of teacher quality, intimating that education labor markets can be structured in ways that simultaneously minimize variation between schools without hindering quality, findings germane to scholars interested in educational equality.

As policy debates concerning LGBTQ+ students and staff continue across the American education system, there is not a clear description of the prevalence of local policy protections, even in states with legislative mandates, nor a strong understanding of how to expand reform initiatives. After conducting a document analysis of policies with a statewide, representative sample of districts, this study uses Illinois as a case study to describe several educational policy levers to scale gender and sexual diversity (GSD) reforms across federal, state, intermediary, and local institutions. The results indicate all districts complied with top-down legislative mandates, but few policies referenced gender or sexual diversity if not state-mandated. A minority of districts enacted policies through administrative guidance (27%), often using language from a state intermediary organization. Results from the regression analysis suggest local factors, such as district size, per pupil spending, and rurality, contribute to adopting guidance, but not policy protections. This study indicates both top-down and bottom-up pathways matter for expanding GSD-related reforms.

Background: A mismatch between organizational priorities and system-level policies can negatively impact implementation and sustainment of classroom-based physical activity (PA) interventions. The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) present methods to systematically identify organization- and system-level implementation barriers, and (2) align organizational priorities and system policies by designing multi-level implementation strategies. This alignment will support implementation scale-up of a tailored PA intervention in one low-resource intermediate school district (ISD; 16 districts, 32 schools) in central Michigan. Methods: Multi-level assessments of organizational readiness were conducted using the Hexagon Discussion and Analysis Tool to assess intervention-context fit, the Wellness School Assessment Tool 3.0 to evaluate district PA policy strength and comprehensiveness, and semi-structured interviews were conducted to assess administrative support and priorities related to PA programming. Results: Our assessments revealed three implementation barriers: limited structural capacity to sustain teacher training, limited resources across districts and school buildings to support teachers, and misalignment of ISD and district PA policies and priorities. Conclusions: Greater attention to organizational capacity and existing infrastructure should be considered "a priori" to support effective implementation and sustainment of PA interventions in low-resource schools.

Children's health is affected by physical activity (PA) opportunities throughout the school day. Schools are a central venue for children meeting physical activity recommendations, and multiple areas, such as recess, have been established to protect against childhood obesity and overweight. Senate Bill 1083 is a law that addresses recess policies in Arizona that calls for students in Grades K-5 receive at least two recess periods per day. The purposes of this study were to explore Arizona charter and public elementary (K-5) school's adherence to Senate Bill 1083 as well as investigate the barriers, if any, to implementing recess. A modified version of the School Physical Activity Policy Assessment survey was administered to members of the Arizona Health and Physical Education organization. Findings from the survey show that Arizona schools are not providing the recommended number of recess periods per day, and there are multiple barriers to recess implementation. Further investigations and bill modifications are needed.