The Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research released a report examining the issue that only a minority of high-achieving, low-income students apply to colleges in the same way that other high-achieving students do: applying to several selective colleges whose curriculum is designed for...
The Alliance for Excellent Education released the first in a series of interactive video profiles highlighting innovative school districts that utilize digital learning to improve teaching and learning. This interactive video profile of the Quakertown Community School District (QCSD) provides...
The U.S. Department of Education released a framework for parents, students, educators, policymakers, business and community leaders, elected officials, and other partners to use in guiding collective efforts to strengthen America’s public education system by rethinking teaching and leading.
This brief from the National Education Policy Center discusses the problem of scaling innovations in education in the United States so that they can serve very large numbers of students. The brief outlines the issues involved, develops a set of five criteria for assessing challenges of scaling, and...
The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education released a report arguing that the resources that are currently spent on student testing could support much higher quality assessments, including performance tasks that include critical thinking and problem solving skills. To do this, states...
The Aspen Institute released a report exploring why targeted well-designed and well-executed surveys can greatly benefit evaluation system reforms. The report describes how to get the most out of surveys in the teacher evaluation process by identifying several practices that are critical to...
The College & Career Readiness & Success Center released a brief providing an overview of the evolution of career technical education (CTE) in the U.S. The brief reviews what CTE looks like in practice and highlights issues CTE faces in the field that must be overcome for it to become an...
Turning around persistently low-performing schools is a critical problem facing our nation. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Education launched an ambitious effort to address that challenge, investing $3.5 billion to fund the School Improvement Grant’s (SIG) Recovery Act program. As part of that...
The National High School Center released a guide for schools and districts that are implementing an early warning system or, specifically, the National High School Center’s Early Warning System (EWS) High School Tool. The guide and tool support the establishment and implementation of an early...
Education First and the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center released a report examining states’ progress in implementing the Common Core State Standards. The authors examined planning activities in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia by surveying state education...
The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) released a guide providing a framework for understanding open educational resources (OER) and outlines development and implementation costs, current business models, government and philanthropy's role, and other considerations around the...
The American Institutes for Research released a guide identifying strategies to ensure that all students, regardless of special needs or language fluency, are prepared for postsecondary education and careers.
In response to a request for information on how states are creating equivalency or approval processes for district evaluation systems, the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center) released a brief outlining a set of promising practices and recommendations for consideration when developing...
In response to a request for information on how states are addressing capacity challenges, such as dealing with the challenge of performing multiple observations for teachers, the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center) released a brief highlighting emerging strategies from policymakers...
The Building State Capacity and Productivity (BSCP) Center released a report outlining a process for SEAs to evaluate and improve their System of Recognition, Accountability, and Support (SRAS).
NCTQ has released its annual Teacher Policy Yearbook. The focus of the yearbook is on the state rules and regulations guiding teacher preparation and licensing. In addition to exploring the policy landscape in each state, the authors map out the specific locus of authority in each state for...
The U.S. Department of Education released a series of publications, describing the flexibility program and the ways in which some participating states are advancing important education reforms. ESEA flexibility enables states and districts to maintain a high bar for student achievement, while...
Learning Forward released a publication designed to assist states and districts in conducting a self-guided review of current professional learning policies. The workbook presents a six-phase process for the review and includes 29 tools to facilitate the entire process as well as links to resources...
The Wallace Foundation released a brief summarizing a decade of foundation research and work in school leadership to identify what it is that effective school principals do.
CRESST released a report describing the evidence centered design framework guiding assessment development for both Smarter Balanced and PARCC as well as each consortia’s plans for system development and validation.
The brief is an attempt to summarize the states’ strategies and consequences for focus schools, primarily from their responses to section 2.3.iii of the flexibility request: Describe the process and timeline the SEA will use to ensure that each LEA that has one or more focus schools will...
The William T. Grant Foundation released a paper surveying the current landscape of partnerships involving school districts to better understand different types of collaborations, the challenges they face, and their strategies for success. Through this paper, they develop sharp insights about this...
The College Board released a report analyzing the more than 300,000 students in the graduating class of 2012 who had been identified as having “AP potential” yet who did not take any recommended AP course. The report revealed striking inequities. In most subject areas, black/African...
The National High School Center’s Early Warning System (EWS) team recently held a free, five-part professional development training series to coincide with the start of the 2012–2013 school year.
Digital Learning Now! (DLN) released its third interactive paper in the DLN Smart Series, which provides recommendations for states and districts to prepare for new online assessments related to the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in 2014–2015. The paper makes the following...
Following a 2011 report by the National Research Council (NRC) on successful K–12 education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), Congress asked the National Science Foundation to identify methods for tracking progress toward the report's recommendations. The NRC convened the...
The U.S. Department of Education released a report focusing on evidence approaches that can be used individually or in combination to design education research and gather and analyze evidence produced by the vast amounts of data generated as teachers and students use digital learning systems.
CCSSO has released a report outlining a set of recommendations for revamping the preparation and licensure of both teachers and principals.
The American Youth Policy Forum has released a report highlighting a series of in-depth case studies to examine how three programs that serve a disconnected youth population are utilizing data as a tool for continuous program improvement and ongoing accountability.
The Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s (AISR) latest issue of Voices in Urban Education highlights the topic of college readiness.
The National High School Center has released its latest Quick Stats Fact Sheet, which provides demographic and achievement statistics for high schools in the United States. The 15-page report offers short summaries and graphic displays of information about the number of high schools and high school...
The National High School Center released a fact sheet highlighting findings and statistics on the current status of high school graduates' readiness for life after high school.
The Alliance for Excellent Education released a policy brief describing the implementation of new college- and career-ready standards, with a focus on the implications for ELLs. The brief discusses the challenges of language acquisition as well as addressing the importance of connecting language...
Jobs for the Future released a guide designed to assist school leaders and leadership teams in planning how to implement effective organizational structures and routines within the school to address the early warning indicators of dropping out.
The Rennie Center released a brief presenting research that contributes to a growing body of work about dropout recovery. It explores common themes in dropout recovery models across the country, identifies lessons learned and challenges encountered in a district-based dropout recovery center in...
EducatorSector has released a brief analyzing the effect of high standards on student achievement. Using state-by-state NAEP data, the authors concluded that high standards help, not hurt, struggling students.
New Leaders released a report identifying the actions that great principals take to ensure and amplify great teaching. The findings are based on an in-depth analysis of the leadership practices in more than 200 district and charter schools that saw substantial gains in student achievement in seven...
The Center for American Progress released a paper offering an assessment of how early adopter states’ departments of education have undertaken the preparation and implementation of new evaluation systems. The paper also identifies challenges and lessons that can be used to guide future reform...
The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) released a report looking at achievement for low-income promising learners—past, present, and future. The report is an outcome from the National Summit on Low-Income, High-Ability Learners, convened by the National Association for Gifted Children...
The Center for Public Education released a report aiming to provide a better understanding of which students are not persisting past their first year of college and what kinds of factors influence this. If state policymakers, post-secondary institutions, school districts, and high schools can...
The National Governors Association released a white paper outlining the case for governors to take a more active role in bringing early-childhood education and K–12 closer together to plan policy and adopt practice.
The International Reading Association released guidance on seven issues that have proven enormously challenging to teachers, principals, administrators, and others who are charged with implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts.
The National Education Policy Center released a brief, explaining how the actual effect of the widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards will depend less on the standards themselves than on how they are used. The author identifies two factors that are particularly crucial. The first is...
The National Education Policy Center released a policy brief exploring the democratic tensions inherent in the federal Student Improvement Grant (SIG) policy's market-based school reforms. It offers recommendations that re-center the purposes of public education for low-income students, students of...
The Center on Education released two reports examining issues related to the accountability systems that approved waiver states have created with the Obama Administration's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) waiver requirements. The first report, What Impact Will NCLB Waivers Have on the Consistency,...
The Center on Education Policy released its 11th annual report on state high school exit exams, finding that states are embracing higher standards on their exit exams, which means schools and students will feel the impact. The report, based on data collected from state education department...
The Center on Reinventing Public Education released a report examining how eight SEAs engaged the charge of improving their lowest-performing schools.
The CALDER Center released a report outlining how growth models should be constructed and used to evaluate schools and teachers. The authors take up the question of model choice and examine three competing approaches. The first approach, reflected in the popular student growth percentiles (SGPs)...
Education Resource Strategies released a brief compiling and analyzing the results of the Sustaining Turnaround at Scale Summit held in October 2011.
