Elizabeth Zumpe, Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma:
Zumpe, E., Dzormeku, D., & Schneider, J. (2025) Understanding school principals’ perspectives on data use. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 1-17.
Despite expectations for data-informed decision making, little is known about which data principals find useful or how they use them. Through interviews with principals in a district introducing new dashboards, this paper examines how nested organizational contexts shape principals’ data use. Contrary to prior research, we found that principals highly valued diagnostic assessments, attendance, and data about student experience outcomes, actively combining data to build data cultures, understand students holistically, and organize interventions. However, data overload and unproductive accountability pressures created obstacles. Findings highlight needs for expanded data access and accountability reforms that support rather than undermine principals’ data use.
Special Conference Session
Jamie Kudlats, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, University of North Carolina at Charlotte:
I host an education law podcast, Chalk & Gavel, and it was recently selected for a live recording at the upcoming SXSW-EDU conference in Austin, TX. More information about the session at: https://schedule.sxswedu.com/events/PP1161937 and more information about Chalk & Gavel at: www.chalkandgavel.com
& Gavel at: www.chalkandgavel.com
Publication
Jamie Kudlats, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
I am the Chief Editor of a new quarterly magazine, Law & Policy in Schools, published by the Education Law Association. Our first issue comes out in early November. More information, and a sample issue will be available shortly on the website: www.educationlaw.org/lapis. We will be looking for writers! (and subscribers!)
Grant
Elizabeth Zumpe, Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma
Elizabeth Zumpe was awarded a Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, a $10,000 grant from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities organization which provides seed grants to enrich the research and professional growth of young faculty. Elizabeth was one of 36 junior faculty selected from 164 applications representing 91 member institutions. Elizabeth's research seeks to understand how early-career researchers develop professional identities as they engage in research-practice partnerships (RPPs). RPPs are long-term collaborations between researchers and educators to solve real-world problems in education. Her project involves a multi-year qualitative case study, now in its third year, about an innovative postdoctoral program for RPP researchers, hosted by two research universities in a metropolitan area in the Midwest. Participants include the universities’ postdoctoral fellows and program mentors. Elizabeth's long-term aspiration is to use the results of this research to develop new research-practice partnership researcher preparation programs, including at her home institution.
Ibrahim Duyar, Professor, Arkansas State University
Dr. Ibrahim Duyar has published a book chapter and three journal articles in 2025.
The list of Ibrahim's publications is below:
2025 Article: The influence of perceived role ambiguity and school leadership prototypes on teachers’ anxiety about school leadership: The mediating role of leadership self-efficacy
2025 Book Chapter: Examining the Contributing Factors of Learning Organizations in High- and Low-achieving Schools
2025 Article: Influence of Teachers’ Secondary Traumatic Symptoms on Their Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Intentions to Resign in Low Socioeconomic Status Schools
2025 Article: Self-Awareness: A Key Factor for Effective Leadership
Ardavan Eizadirad, Associate Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University
:Eizadirad, A., & Reece, R. (2025). Decolonizing community re-entry: Effective case studies of community-led programs and services to support formerly incarcerated individuals in Canada. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Success, 4, 67-92.
Decolonizing re-entry programs require rethinking traditional approaches in supporting formerly incarcerated individuals and challenging colonial and deficit frameworks embedded in the criminal legal system, which often has an exclusive focus on punishment. This article names the risk factors and systemic barriers faced by equity-denied individuals during reintegration with a focus on the Canadian context. Two community-led programs in Ontario are highlighted as innovative case studies for effectively supporting reintegration of individuals exiting carceral institutions. Key characteristics of these programs which are offered by the Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education (YAAACE) and Walls to Bridges (W2B) are outlined. Implications are discussed for enhancing effective community re-entry with a focus on amplifying the transformative impact of peer-led, trauma-informed programs that capitalize on the lived and living experiences of criminalized individuals. A series of recommendations are outlined regarding the importance of integrating Indigenous and Africentric knowledge systems and offering more programs and services rooted in trauma-informed approaches. These strategies would mitigate the unique challenges faced by Indigenous, Black, and other equity-denied identities who are disproportionately incarcerated.
Publication:
Eizadirad, A., Chambers, T. N., & Chua, J. (2025). Racialized lived experiences of no-knock raids in Canadian policing: Supporting the dissenting opinion in the legal case of R v Cornell. Studies in Social Justice. 19 (2), 300-320.
A no-knock police raid is a law enforcement tactic where officers enter a private dwelling without prior notice. In Canada, there is a significant lack of comprehensive data, on the frequency and outcomes of no-knock police raids and their unintended damages and consequences. While quantitative studies on police violence have been informative, there is a significant gap in documenting racialized lived experiences with no-knock police raids in Canada. This research addresses the gap by focusing on the lived experiences of four Black and one South Asian individual subjected to no-knock police raids. Qualitative interviews were conducted in 2022 followed with thematic analysis. This exploratory study, though small in sample size, sheds light on the overlooked experiences of individuals subjected to no-knock police raids. It provides data to support the dissenting opinion in the legal case R v Cornell which advocates for the regulation of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams including controls on no knock tactics in Canada. The findings contribute to understanding the emotional and psychological toll no-knock police raids have on racialized individuals and communities. Findings contribute to the broader literature and discussions on how to improve policing tactics to mitigate harm by preventing unintended collateral harm and better protect privacy rights.
Matthew McCluskey, Assistant Professor, University of Vermont
McCluskey, M. S., & Narayanan, M. (2025). Uncommon or too common? The discursive diffusion and transformation of charter edupreneurial policy ideas. Journal of Education Policy, 0(0).
Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) have proliferated rapidly across the United States over the last three decades. While CMOs are often required to disperse ‘best practices,’ we know little about the extent to which such schools’ practices and policy ideas have spread across the educational landscape. Using a systematic search of publicly available documents, this study investigated the influence of two CMO-based edupreneurs – Paul Bambrick-Santoyo and Doug Lemov – as a case to understand charter-based policy diffusion. We found evidence of Bambrick- Santoyo and Lemov’s works across all levels of our analysis and across all states in the U.S. and beyond in places such as policy reports, state guidance, school websites, and accountability plans. While many artifacts demonstrate a considerable level of policy uptake, the majority of artifacts demonstrate a referential and suggestive engagement with the authors. Grounded in Critical Policy Analysis, we argue that our findings show how policy ideas can be discursively transformed through diffusion processes. This diffusion and transformation suggests a narrowing of school reform driven by market ideologies and crafted specifically for low-income schools serving students of Color
McCluskey, M. S., & Narayanan, M. (2025). Posting against the system: BIPOC teacher counterstories and resistance in charter management organizations. Urban Education, 0(0).
After the murder of George Floyd, Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) teachers at no-excuses charter management organizations (CMOs) formed digital counterpublics on Instagram to anonymously denounce their CMO experience. Grounded in the concept of neoliberalism, Critical Race Theory, and Black Critical Theory, this study uncovers the primary patterns in teacher posts across CMO-based BIPOC@ and Black@ Instagram accounts. Teachers engaged in a social-media-based solidarity movement to reveal their experiences as BIPOC in CMOs and the ways that CMOs and their embodiment of neoliberal logics enact harmful and racist practices. In doing so, teachers offer a counter-narrative to the liberatory narrative self-championed by CMOs.
André Meyer, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Potsdam
Meyer, A., Yada, T., Yada, A., Kempert, S., & Richter, D. (2025). Principal leadership practices for supporting teacher collaboration and collective teacher efficacy: A random intercept cross-lagged panel model. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 0(0).
Teacher collaboration and collective teacher efficacy are key factors in a school's capacity for improvement. Based on assumptions drawn from social capital theory, we posit that principals play a pivotal role in shaping teachers’ work environments, thereby enhancing collaboration and collective efficacy. However, evidence on the determinants of these factors and their dynamics as aspects of a school's social capital remains limited. Using longitudinal survey data from teachers in Germany collected over three measurement occasions (n1=619, n2=674, n3 =263), this study provides evidence of a temporal relationship between principal leadership to promote within-school collaboration and collective teacher efficacy, mediated by teacher collaboration. Additionally, we find a reciprocal temporal relationship between teacher collaboration and collective efficacy. Our findings contribute to understanding the causal relationship between these factors and underscore the critical role of principal leadership in fostering this interplay.
Alison Wilson, Assistant Professor, University of Houston
Wilson, A., Blair, A., Endacott, J., Giller, C., & Goering, C. Z. (2025). The discursive tactics of perpetuating white normativity in public education: A critical policy discourse analysis of anti-CRT policies across 18 states. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 33.
In recent years, state policies banning “divisive concepts” have proliferated as part of a coordinated effort to undermine racial justice by framing critical discussions of race as “indoctrination” and imposing ideological restrictions on curriculum and pedagogy. Using critical policy discourse analysis informed by a critical study of whiteness, this paper examines how 22 policy documents from 18 states operate discursively to shape the parameters of race- related discourse in public education. Our findings suggest that these policies employ three primary discursive maneuvers: (1) constructing false equivalencies that equate white discomfort with racial oppression, (2) appealing to “universal” values to obscure systemic inequities, and (3) controlling definitional boundaries to determine what qualifies as racism and racial harm. These discursive maneuvers not only shape public perception and discourse but also work to preemptively silence conversations related to systemic racism in schools. This study underscores the importance of examining policy as discourse, revealing how language itself operates as a mechanism for maintaining racial hierarchies while presenting itself as neutral. These tactics extend beyond K–12 education, shaping rhetoric and policy in higher education and other public institutions.