Scaling Gender and Sexual Diversity Policies in K-12 Schools

Abstract

As policy debates concerning LGBTQ+ students and staff continue across the American education system, there is not a clear description of the prevalence of local policy protections, even in states with legislative mandates, nor a strong understanding of how to expand reform initiatives. After conducting a document analysis of policies with a statewide, representative sample of districts, this study uses Illinois as a case study to describe several educational policy levers to scale gender and sexual diversity (GSD) reforms across federal, state, intermediary, and local institutions. The results indicate all districts complied with top-down legislative mandates, but few policies referenced gender or sexual diversity if not state-mandated. A minority of districts enacted policies through administrative guidance (27%), often using language from a state intermediary organization. Results from the regression analysis suggest local factors, such as district size, per pupil spending, and rurality, contribute to adopting guidance, but not policy protections. This study indicates both top-down and bottom-up pathways matter for expanding GSD-related reforms.

A Starting Point: Gender, Hot Cognition, and Trans-Informed Administrative Guidance

“…Policies and multiple implementation tools can lead to incremental changes in school practices (Spillane et al, 2002a, 2002b). While more than a quarter of districts across the state (27%) provided guidance documents concerning transgender students (McQuillan, 2021), many existing guidance texts in this study failed to effectively bridge a trans-informed approach with existing legislation at the level of specificity needed to educate administrators who have not received formal education on gender issues. In other words, there has not been an effective alignment in educating teachers and administrators with statewide legal mandates.…”

“…In addition to determining who should be included in policy reforms, administrative guidance outlines possible administrative actions around key issues. State gender reforms frequently filtered through intermediate agencies, the Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB) or the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), as districts implemented state legislative reforms (McQuillan, 2021). IASB provided templates and other policy consulting services to aid district compliance efforts.…”

“…Illinois was an ideal location to study variation in local districts’ responses, or nonresponses, to policy protections for transgender students. Illinois was demographically, politically, and economically representative of the United States population (Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2018; McQuillan, 2021; U.S. Census Bureau, 2017).…”

“…The data for this study came from a larger document analysis (Figure 1). In that collection process, the research team collected up to 13 documents from each district in the sample by downloading documents from district websites (if available) and contacting district offices directly to verify the completeness of the documents (McQuillan, 2021). The researchers also asked each district to send additional documents concerning LGBTQ+ students used by the districts, such as administrative procedures or guidance, if they were not posted online.…”

“…Among administrators’ core responsibilities is ensuring that school staff comply with policies, so the authors of guidance documents often focus on delineating the legal scaffolding for reforms (Halverson & Kelley, 2017; Spillane, 2012). By targeting leaders’ understanding of policy reforms, the guidance documents have the potential to influence superintendents’, principals’, and other district-level student services administrators’ decisions about resource allocation, curricular alignment, professional development, instructional practices, and school goals (McQuillan, 2021).…”