New "autonomy initiatives" aim to increase schools' decision-making authority as a strategy to leverage school improvement. These policies build on lessons of previous reforms such as site-based management in ways that bode well for their success. However, how are these policies actually faring in implementation? The authors addressed that…

Following a national trend, state policy has focused on accountability measures such as high-stakes high school exit exams, standards-based reforms, and graduation curriculum requirements. Yet the effect of these accountability policies on students' readiness for college is relatively untested. In a multilevel model (students within states), the…

This article describes the central elements of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and, drawing from Spillane's distributed leadership perspective, examines the policy's impact on the homeless education situation. Although the initial passing and subsequent revisions to McKinney-Vento are depicted as providing numerous benefits for students…

In many cases, state systems of higher education are not only challenged to address decreasing state budgets but are also asked to increase student retention and other measures of student success. The increased use of contingent faculty may help economically, but this trend may have unintended consequences. This research used logistic regression…

Using a theoretical lens of democratic education, this study critically analyzes pilot schools in the Boston Public School system, a school model gaining influence and imitation around the United States. Building on theories regarding the role of democracy in schools, and especially workplace democracy, this article juxtaposes these conceptions of…

The authors discuss how participatory action research (PAR) informs the pedagogy and epistemology of the social justice education. PAR facilitates students' engagement in their social context and acquisition of knowledge to initiate personal and social transformation. The scope of research contains knowledge about social justice issues negatively…

The role of unions in school governance is reviewed to note that labor operates in a larger context of principal-agent relationships. As agents for teachers, unions articulate the concerns that must be addressed if teachers are to be successfully enlisted in the struggle to reduce achievement gaps among at-risk students. Transcending industrial…

Educational systems in the United States are generating vast amounts of data on student achievement. This may provide researchers and policy makers with long sought-after insight on the factors explaining student performance. This study uses recent data from Washington 10th graders to examine why some students learned more math than others.…

Using urban regime theory, the article examines two Rust Belt cities that tried to break the cycle of social reproduction in their communities by reforming their schools. The article contributes to the development of urban regime theory by comparing an "emerging" regime to an "established" regime. The comparison highlights the interdependent…

Given the efforts of comprehensive school reform to improve the quality of educational opportunities for students by providing a standards based curriculum, this analysis examines the issue of tracking and its implications regarding curriculum differentiation. Using data from middle schools involved with the comprehensive school reform model,…

Mirroring many of the same social and geographic inequities present in the K-12 educational system, the promise of early childhood education has been unfulfilled for many young children and their families. Social norms and funding structures, including the lack of universal, publicly funded high-quality preschool offerings, have served to…

Most young children in the United States regularly spend time in early care and education (ECE) settings. Institutionalized messages surrounding ECE claim that it has the potential to promote children's life-long success, especially among low-income children. I examine the legitimacy of these claims by reviewing empirical evidence that bears on…

With growing evidence that human capital investment is more efficiently spent on younger children coupled with wide variation in preschool access across states, this article uses a neoliberal approach to examine the potential social costs and benefits that could accrue should the United States decide to implement a centralized preschool…

The landscape of financing early childhood education in the U.S. is complex. Programs run the gamut from tuition-supported private centers to public programs supported by federal, state, or local funds. Different funding streams are poorly coordinated. The federal government funds several major targeted programs that are available only to specific…

This article historicizes the collision of K-12 public schooling and early childhood education by interrogating the ways in which people called for and implemented the public kindergarten into primary school over the past century. Using a theoretical framework that pays attention to the ways in which policy develops over time we provide a…