Educational Policy

Improving school climate has emerged as a strategy to reduce discipline disparities. This study uses the case of New York City to examine the differential relationships between school climate and students’ likelihood of receiving office discipline referrals (ODRs) or suspensions. The results illustrate that the association between school climate and school discipline varies significantly by student characteristics. Black, Latinx, male, low-income, special education status and students in temporary housing have a smaller associated decrease in likelihood of receiving ODRs and suspensions in more positive school climates relative to other students, although this depends on whether disparities metrics are absolute or relative. School racial composition, school achievement, and the diversity of teachers and school leaders moderate the association between school climate and disciplinary outcomes for Black and Latinx students. Policymakers should consider concurrent investments in school climate and the diversity of school personnel that influences who benefits most from school climate.

Ideological clarity has been defined as a catalyst for more equitable educational practice. However, in the absence of concrete analytic tools, research on ideological clarity has not adequately accounted for why some educators find space to take corresponding sociopolitical action where others do not. In this exploratory qualitative study, I examined the role of ideological clarity in educators’ sensemaking of English language development (ELD) policy. Informed by interviews with 26 ELD educators, I propose a framework and demonstrate its utility for understanding the role of ideological clarity in (en)countering the theoretical and ideological complexities of policies aimed at educational equity.

School district leaders across the U.S. have turned to the portfolio strategy to manage charter school growth and budget crises disproportionately facing low-income communities of color. The portfolio strategy aims to manage school choice options through increasing central office oversight of charter schools, autonomy for district schools, and accountability around student learning outcomes. This article examines the portfolio district in Oakland, California as a case of network governance, a lineage of “third way” policy strategies that bring together public and private sectors. I argue that district leaders and reform advocates advanced Oakland’s portfolio strategy to resolve fiscal and organizational challenges of school choice policies based on networks of trust, collaboration, and reciprocity between district schools and charter schools. However, new governing arrangements and collaborative initiatives repeated some of the same exclusionary practices and deepened mistrust, revealing new political challenges to improving district-charter coordination.

In the classic school choice market model, school districts are conceived as exerting competitive pressure on each other by improving conditions in the schools and programs within their boundaries. In this article, we examine an invasive action where a school district increased student enrollment by actively bussing students from within another district’s boundaries (bussing district), an invasive action that deviates from the classic school choice market model. In our focused analysis of three Phoenix elementary districts using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the bussing district realized a “bump” of 44.7 students on average per school, after controlling for distance and school quality, via transporting students directly from within its neighbor district’s boundaries. The findings may portend more aggressive actions that mirror the market behaviors of charter schools as districts face declining student enrollment counts due to the proliferation of market reforms that increase competition.