In the U.S., programming for students classified as English Learners must adhere to the framework outlined in "Castañeda v. Pickard" (1981), which demands a basis in "legitimate educational theory," implementation with "adequate techniques," and regular evaluation (p. 1010), while remaining explicitly agnostic about…

This study interrogates "Abbeville v. the State of South Carolina" using a policy-regimes framework to understand the relationship between the South Carolina Judicial System, General Assembly, and Educational stakeholders. We seek to understand how the political interests of the General Assembly and wealthy districts may have subverted a…

This article summarizes the applicable judicial analysis for cases in which special education personnel claim that their employing district retaliated against them for advocacy on behalf of students with disabilities. Providing examples of recent relevant court decisions, it traces the applicable essential elements and likely outcomes for such…

This report argues that the Michigan state constitution's "Blaine Amendment," a provision which prevents parents from drawing on state funding to go outside the public school system, is superseded by the United States Supreme Court's 2020 ruling in the case Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. The report discusses a legislative…

Counterfactual thinking is a form of mental simulation that informs causal judgments regarding the role antecedent events played in producing present outcomes. We examined whether inducing participants to think counterfactually about a case involving eyewitness evidence would sensitize them to variations in eyewitness evidence quality.…

Detecting racial discrimination using observational data is challenging because of the presence of unobservables that may be correlated with race. Using data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard case, we estimate discrimination in a setting where this concern is mitigated. Namely, we show that there is a substantial penalty against Asian Americans…

In August 2022, the U.S Department of Education (ED) announced it would invoke the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act) to cancel up to $20,000 of federal student loan debts for borrowers who fell below certain income thresholds. The HEROES Act authorizes the Secretary to "waive or modify" statutory…

There is wide variability in settings where students with intellectual disability are taught and a dearth of research related to district special education administrators, their roles and responsibilities, and their perceptions of barriers to and policies and practices that promote access to general education environments for these students. This…

Using critical discourse analysis, this article reveals how power is inherent in and maintained through Title IX campus-based adjudication processes. We interrogate the role of identity and power in Title IX adjudication processes through an intersectional analytic framework. We challenge the reliance on fairness and neutrality, which leads…

Background: Qualitative research using published court records to examine contextual factors that contribute to child protection decisions in cases involving parents with intellectual disabilities is limited, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: The present study conducted qualitative content analysis on 10 published Ontario court…

State education finance sets the stage for what is possible in schools. Too many state education finance systems today are inequitable, outdated, and inadequate, and there are often significant political barriers to change. Advocates for educational equity can and should play an essential role in shaping the allocation and structure of state…

Changes in Title IX policy feature questions about due process and procedures, however campus response to sexual violence includes a wide array of support professionals each with their own guiding principle, or institutional logic. Building on prior research identifying contradictions between service professionals and the theory of institutional…

Jennifer Bradley (plaintiff) was a junior year student athlete at the University in Washington, D.C. Bradley played field hockey for the university, and in September 2011, she was hit on the head during a field hockey game between the university and Richmond University. After that hit, she began experiencing symptoms of a concussion, but continued…

Although ubiquitous in academic discourse for over a decade, disciplinary literacy scholarship has only recently begun to explicitly interrogate critical literacy as a discipline-dependent set of dispositions, discourses, skills, and practices. Drawing from critical disciplinary literacy (CDL) theory, this article presents findings from a…

As part of the first author's expert testimony at a court trial, we investigated hindsight bias in perceptions of the predictability of a real flash flood. Participants were presented with pictures taken before the flash flood and asked to rate the muddiness of the water and judge the likelihood of flooding in Experiment 1. Participants who were…