Kate Destler is an Associate Professor of Political Science in American Politics and Public Policy at Western Washington University and assumed the role of Director of the Ralph Munro Institute for Civic Education in 2021. She specializes in public policy and American politics, with a focus on education policy, civic participation, and policy implementation. She comes to Western from George Mason University, where she served as a faculty member in the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs.
A former K-12 English and social studies teacher, she graduated from the Evans School of Public Affairs with a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Management. She also holds an AB in Comparative Literature from Brown University and a Masters in English Teaching from the University of Virginia.
Public schooling has always been politically fraught, but current disagreements over issues related to race, sexuality, gender, and Covid-19 have reached a tipping point.
In this report, we update our ongoing research on five school systems to reveal the academic, social, and political challenges posed by the pandemic and what system leaders and their staff are doing to address student learning loss.
Headed into 2022-23, school administrators are going to have to pursue new strategies to make up for learning loss.
This report complements our latest fall 2021 survey research from the American School District Panel with in-depth interviews of leaders on the ground in five school systems.
This paper outlines competing principles of charter school oversight and examines how those principles affect an authorizer’s approach to finding and selecting new schools, conducting day-to-day oversight of performance, and responding to the threat of school failure.
Policymakers and researchers alike have expressed concern about a teacher quality gap between schools with affluent student populations and the more disadvantaged ones.