Our Research Initiatives

In a new policy brief, Avoiding the Supreme Court's Religious Charter-School Trap: Governance Change for the New Legal Era, authors Kevin G. Welner (University of Colorado Boulder), Carol C. Burris (Network for Public Education), and Preston C. Green III (University of Connecticut) warn that, without proactive legislative action, this radical transformation of states' charter sectors could be fully imposed within two years. Appendix

The first year of the second Trump administration has seen a radical break from six decades of federal education policy, discarding the longstanding vision of equal access and human capital development in favor of a new, and as yet undefined, approach to American educational governance. In a new policy brief, Studying the First Year of Trump's Second Term: The Renewed Importance of Participatory Governance, Dr. Derek Gottlieb, a leading scholar of education policy, examines the educational purposes that administration officials have publicly articulated across a variety of platforms, along with the actions that the federal government has taken over the past year to achieve its goals.

Critiques of public education have intensified in recent years. While public schools do indeed have real areas in need of growth and improvement, many of today’s attacks are generated and amplified by organizations seeking to manufacture crises. These narratives often ignore counterevidence, and they use deceptive language to portray the system as broadly failing, even hopeless. To examine these destructive critiques, Huriya Jabbar and Daniel Espinoza of the University of Southern California authored a policy brief, The Cycle of Disinvestment in Public Schools: How Public School Criticism Drives Policy and Disinvestment, released today by NEPC. The brief identifies five core narratives used to portray a failing education system: claims of underachievement, inefficiency, inequality, lack of school choice, and indoctrination.

American public education faces an escalating challenge: the rise of Christian nationalism. This movement entwines politics and religion, insisting the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and should be governed by rigid hierarchies under the Christian God. A new policy brief explores the political and ideological effects this movement has on education policy.

A new policy brief, Fit for Purpose? How Today's Commercial Digital Platforms Subvert Key Goals of Public Education, by Faith Boninger of the University of Colorado Boulder and T. Philip Nichols of Baylor University, reviews research examining key pedagogical, logistical, and ethical implications of ed tech platforms for schools. The brief's analysis of these implications leads to recommendations for teachers, school leaders, and policymakers on how to govern its use.