As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday in 2026, debates over democracy, rights, and free speech dominate headlines. At the same time, school districts face growing pressure to decide what kinds of...
CRPE analyzes how politics—especially polarization and partisan divides—impact enacting and sustaining meaningful education reform. Political dynamics have often hindered progress, stalling promising innovations and narrowing the space for bipartisan solutions. Our work examines these tensions, identifies strategies to navigate them, and highlights opportunities for leaders to move reforms forward despite political headwinds.
As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday in 2026, debates over democracy, rights, and free speech dominate headlines. At the same time, school districts face growing pressure to decide what kinds of...
A new report from the American School District Panel, a research partnership between RAND and CRPE, examines how districts define and facilitate civic learning in an era of political polarization, competing instructional priorities, and uneven...
Announcing a new forum for bold ideas to build momentum Proposals to eliminate the Department of Education (ED) have been a Republican talking point since Ronald Reagan first suggested it in the early 1980s. The...
The debate over how schools should teach about race heightened this week when the College Board released a framework for a new Advanced Placement course in African-American studies that reduced some of the content from...
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. According to a new report from the Center on Reinventing Public...
In K–12 education, politics is the great equalizer. It has killed initiatives from the right and from the left, from top-down district curriculum mandates to site-based management. Common Core State Standards, test-based accountability, and the...
Paul Hill and Ashley Jochim profile portfolio strategy efforts in five cities and offer lessons for leaders to sustain long-term education reform amid political opposition.
This report presents the results of an analysis of legal, regulatory, and policy barriers to high school redesign in California.
This paper examines the trend in school districts, across the country and in Seattle, of substantially withdrawing from mandatory integration policies.
