Over the past two and a half decades, digital technologies and virtual education have moved quickly to the top of the K-12 public education reform agenda. Proponents, including business leaders, school reform organizations, foundations, and for-profit and nonprofit service providers, argue that virtual technology will revolutionize teaching and…

"Discriminatory censorship laws" regulate classroom conversations about racism, gender identity, and other topics targeted in the backlash against efforts toward inclusive classrooms and curricula. This policy brief examines the proliferation of these laws and their impact on K-12 schools, including the creation of hostile learning…

Transgender and nonbinary (collectively referred to here as "trans") students are ill-served by most school environments. They experience challenges trying to navigate institutions that, at best, are poorly designed to support them and that often work against them. Although some districts and states have developed laws and policies to…

Grow your own (GYO) programs are designed to recruit, prepare, and place community members as teachers in local schools. They do this through partnerships between educator preparation programs, school districts or local educational agencies, and community-based organizations. The nation is currently seeing new and thoughtful uses of the approach.…

This policy memo examines some fundamental shifts, along with their real-world implications, within the past 60 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence, up to and including the current "Carson v. Makin" case. The Supreme Court is just a few small steps away from transforming every charter school law in the U.S. into a private-school voucher…

How students learn to read and how reading is best taught are often the focus of media, public, and political criticism. The contemporary reading reform movement is the latest chapter of a long history of controversies, dating from at least the early 20th century. Throughout the decades, attention has focused on how teachers teach reading…

School vouchers, a school choice policy that allows students and families to use public funds to fully or partially pay the cost of attending private schools, became a major area of policy debate once again during Betsy DeVos's tenure as United States Secretary of Education. Recent evaluations have found negative impacts of vouchers on academic…

Even as the U.S. education system becomes more ethnically and racially diverse, many racial disparities persist with regard to school segregation, educational resources, and ultimately educational outcomes. These disparities harm students individually and have significant societal impacts as well, including economic consequences. Educational…

In recent decades, state policymakers across the country have turned to early literacy policies to address students' reading proficiency--particularly in third grade. Though states' policies vary widely in terms of the interventions and supports provided to educators and students, their intent is similar: to get students reading on grade level by…

The focus of this brief is on the education of unaccompanied immigrant children arriving from Central America and Mexico, fleeing violence and poverty in their countries. Upon arrival, these children encounter a complicated immigration legal system, while having to navigate a new society within an anti-immigrant sociopolitical context. In recent…

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed virtual schooling to the forefront of the national educational landscape. Long-time proponents of this technology quickly positioned digital programs and platforms as the obvious solution for schools that had to close buildings to avoid transmitting the virus. The pandemic exacerbated a trend that NEPC virtual…

Attacks on Critical Race Theory (CRT) have been in the news for over a year. Rallies have been organized, school board meetings disrupted, executive orders issued, and legislation introduced to remove or exclude CRT from school curriculum. Since early 2021, eight states have passed legislation that, broadly speaking, seeks to ban historical…

The American voters have spoken, and the country will inaugurate a Biden-Harris Administration in January. In his first speech as President-Elect on November 7, 2020, Joe Biden said that, "the battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country" was a pillar of the Biden-Harris transition plan. This important…

There is a near unanimity among researchers and practitioners about the need to recruit and retain more teachers of color. Diversification of the teaching ranks has clear benefits. This brief contends that the push for diversifying the teaching force must be scrutinized within the context of larger patterns and structures of racial injustice, and…

School districts around the country have launched new reform strategies that are designed to expand autonomy for public schools, often called "Innovation Schools." Pursuant to these state- and local-level plans to create more autonomous schools, school leaders are granted greater amounts of authority over school operations such as…