Every year, first-generation students across the country step
onto college and university campuses that are different from
their hometown in every way. Even for those financially and
academically prepared, social and emotional challenges can
influence their ability to stay and graduate.
This is the first of a four-part special report, “Far From Home.”
The mid-June clouds stark white and heavy with impending rain,
Darby Dugay listened for the splatter of falling drops, noting
that the foul weather might delay her basketball practice.
Nearly a year after Hurricane Harvey submerged coastal Port
Arthur, the rain still brings the 17-year-old’s heart rate up,
especially when water overflows the long-neglected drainage
ditches lining the neighborhood’s sidewalks.
Huge contributions from tech titans, a STEM-packed curriculum,
gadgets everywhere: Willie Brown Middle School was supposed to
set the bar. Then it opened.
David Jackson, Jennifer Smith Richards, Gary Marx and Juan Perez Jr.Chicago Tribune
They were top athletes and honor-roll students, children
struggling to read and teenagers seeking guidance.
But then they became prey, among the many students raped or
sexually abused during the last decade by trusted adults working
in the Chicago Public Schools as district officials repeated
obvious child-protection mistakes.
Their lives were upended, their futures clouded and their pain
unacknowledged as a districtwide problem was kept under wraps. A
Tribune analysis indicates that hundreds of students were harmed.
Education journalists from across the nation gathered here this
week with a focus on diversity in their profession, recent
activism by teachers, and the scourge of school violence, among
other topics.
The Education Writers Association’s top award for education
reporting went to John Woodrow Cox of The Washington Post for a
compelling three-part series on
children and gun violence, which was published last June.
He thought he’d be safe backstage, out of the spotlight, away
from the shadows that prowled the edges of his vision when his
guard was down.
Crowds spooked him now. It was seven weeks since he had locked
eyes with a black-masked gunman taking aim at him in the midst of
the worst school shooting in Florida’s history. Seven weeks since
he’d made the split-second decision that saved his life but left
a softball-sized hole in his leg. Seven weeks since he’d seen
bullets lodging in the wall around him as he ran past bodies of
his classmates in a wild panic to survive.
Barbara Laker, Wendy Ruderman, and Dylan PurcellThe Philadelphia Inquirer
Every school day in Philadelphia, children are exposed to a stew
of environmental hazards, both visible and invisible, that can
rob them of a healthy place to learn and thrive. Too often, the
district knows of the perils but downplays them to parents.
As part of its “Toxic City” series, the Inquirer and Daily News
investigated the physical conditions at district-run schools.
Reporters examined five years of internal maintenance logs and
building records, and interviewed 120 teachers, nurses, parents,
students, and experts.
When 13-year-old André Cordeiro moved from rural Portugal to
Toronto, the only English words he knew were, “hi,” “bye,” and
“hot dog.” Four years later, he speaks English “way better” and
credits the English-learner class he attends every morning at
Islington Junior Middle School.
College students’ views on the First Amendment are important for
another reason as well: Students act as de facto arbiters of free
expression on campus. The Supreme Court justices are not standing
by at the entrances to public university lecture halls ready to
step in if First Amendment rights are curtailed. If a significant
percentage of students believe that views they find offensive
should be silenced, those views will in fact be silenced.
In early January, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York announced his
intention to make a public college education tuition-free for
most students in the state. The proposal has breathed life back
into the free college movement, which supporters feared would
lose momentum under the incoming presidential administration.
Instead, momentum has simply relocated (back) to the state level.
Tennessee and Oregon already have their own “free college”
initiatives, and just this week, Governor Gina Raimondo proposed
a version for Rhode Island.
Higher education issues took a more prominent role in the 2016
elections than any time in recent memory, college affordability
and student debt levels catapulted higher education to the top of
domestic policy concerns. Both major party nominees for
president, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton,
included higher education proposals in their policy agendas, with
Clinton offering the most expansive, ambitious higher education
plan than any other major party candidate in decades.
States are now deeply engaged in developing plans for their
federal education spending for the next several years. Decades of
experience and education research indicate that states must
strengthen and organize the educator workforce to implement
change successfully. Now is the time to rethink systems and
strategies and to focus funds and efforts on what matters most
for learning: great teachers and leaders for every student and
school.
Systemic challenges in the educator workforce require thoughtful
and bold actions, and ESSA presents a unique opportunity for
states to reaffirm, modify, or improve their vision of educator
effectiveness. This GTL Center discussion guide focuses on one
challenge that states face as part of this work: defining
ineffective teacher in the absence of highly qualified teacher
(HQT) requirements.
Numerous studies show large differences between economically
advantaged and disadvantaged parents in the quality and quantity
of their engagement in young children’s development. This
“parenting gap” may account for a substantial portion of the gap
in children’s early cognitive skills. However, researchers know
little about whether the socioeconomic gap in parenting has
increased over time. The present study investigates this
question, focusing on income- (and education) based gaps in
parents’ engagement in cognitively stimulating activities with
preschool-aged children.
Predictive analytics–using massive amounts of historical data to
predict future events–is a practice that’s making it easier and
faster for colleges to decide which students to enroll and how to
get them to graduation. But predictive analytics can aid in
discriminatory practices, make institutional practices less
transparent, and make vulnerable individuals’ data privacy and
security.
The moment they earn their bachelor’s degrees, black college
graduates owe $7,400 more on average than their white peers
($23,400 versus $16,000, including non-borrowers in the
averages). But over the next few years, the black-white debt gap
more than triples to a whopping $25,000. Differences in interest
accrual and graduate school borrowing lead to black graduates
holding nearly $53,000 in student loan debt four years after
graduation—almost twice as much as their white counterparts.
Cognitive skills—that is, math and reading skills that are
measured by standardized tests—are generally understood to be of
critical importance in the labor market. Most people find it
intuitive and indeed unsurprising that cognitive skills, as
measured by standardized tests, are important for students’
later-life outcomes. For example, earnings tend to be higher for
those with higher levels of cognitive skills. What is less well
understood—and is the focus of these economic facts—is that
noncognitive skills are also integral to educational performance
and labor-market outcomes.
This report examines the status of education in the United
States by aggregating high quality research and data from
numerous credible sources. Each chapter describes the context and
the current state of play in each focus area –
including student achievement, standards
and testing; school finance, and charter schools, among
others. It highlights key policy issues and trends affecting
public education now and in the future.
Competency-based education (CBE), an instructional approach that
emphasizes what students learn and master rather than how much
time they spend in school, is gaining popularity nationwide. CBE
environments provide students with personalized learning,
autonomy, flexibility, and responsibility for their own learning,
which is theorized to improved learning behaviors.
The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), like No Child Left
Behind before it, requires states to report information on the
academic achievement of students in each of their schools, both
overall and for various subgroups of students. A subgroup of
particular interest to policymakers and researchers is
economically disadvantaged students, who, on average, score much
lower on standardized tests than their higher-income peers.
Educational Exclusion: Drop Out, Push Out, and the
School-to-Prison Pipeline among LGBTQ Youth provides an
in-depth look at the conditions that effectively push LGBTQ youth
out of school and potentially into the criminal justice system.
The report provides specific, real world guidance to address the
hostile school climates and damaging policies and practices that
contribute to pushing LGBTQ youth out of their schools.
Match Beyond has a bodacious goal: To invent a college program
that wipes out undergraduate debt and cures poverty.
Not the rarefied college designed for that by-the-bootstraps,
defy-the-odds high school senior trotted out for interviews and
inspirational speeches when visitors come to high-poverty schools
looking for their scholarship success stories.
One of the most important and welcomed provisions of the Every
Student Succeed Act (ESSA) is the removal of so-called adequate
yearly progress – the federal mandate that came to symbolize
everything that was wrong with the way No Child Left Behind
defined and measured accountability. AYP imposed rigid
and narrow measures for school improvement, improperly
labeling many schools as low-performing and imposing punishment
when they were unable to meet the unrealistic expectations for
proficiency.
Far far too many students, the path between high school and
higher education is littered with detours and roadblocks.
… “Mapping College Ready Policies 2015-16,” a data
visualization project released earlier today by New America’s
Education Policy Program, analyzes individual states’ progress
towards addressing these challenges to ensure all students are on
a sturdy bridge on their route from high school to higher
education.
To date, most of the public narrative and pushback on new teacher
evaluation systems has centered around their use for high-stakes
personnel decisions such as pay, promotion, and dismissal. But
these systems were always intended to promote and support
improvements for all teachers—not just the superstars or
laggards.
The Health of the Charter Public School Movement: A
State-by-State Analysis evaluates the health of the charter
public school movement in key states across the country.
Following the first report released in October 2014,
this second edition measures movement growth, innovation, and
quality, while this year doubling the number of quality measures.
Due to these quality additions, a total of 18 states with charter
school laws met the criteria for inclusion in this year’s report.
A new review released by the Arts Education Partnership (AEP), a
policy center within the Education Commission of the States,
offers a comprehensive look at state policies for arts education
identified in statute or administrative code for all 50 states
and the District of Columbia.
State achievement standards represent how much the state expects
their students to learn in order to reach various levels of
academic proficiency. In the past, these achievement standards
were used by each state to report adequate yearly progress under
No Child Left Behind federal legislation, and are now being used
for federal reporting under the Every Student Succeeds Act of
2015.
As districts face the recurring problem of ensuring every student
has access to a high-quality teacher, a growing number have begun
to proactively form deep, mutually beneficial partnerships with
teacher preparation programs to produce teacher candidates who
match their specific needs. These partnerships, when done well,
take significant time and resources on behalf of both parties,
but have the ability to transform the work of both institutions.
Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and the Common
Good through College Admissions, represents the first time
that a broad coalition of colleges and universities have joined
forces in a unified effort calling for widespread change in the
college admissions process. The report
includes concrete recommendations to reshape the college
admissions process and promote greater ethical engagement among
aspiring students, reduce excessive achievement pressure, and
level the playing field for economically disadvantaged students.
Trends in College Spending: 2003–2013 examines college and
university finances during one of the most turbulent economic
periods in decades. The financial ramifications of the 2008
recession were vast, affecting students’ ability to pay for
college, lawmakers’ prioritization of public resources, and the
budgetary environment facing higher education leaders. The
challenges brought by the fiscal crisis also provided colleges
and universities with an opportunity to reevaluate how they
allocated resources and rethink how to manage costs and improve
student outcomes.
This report is designed to help improve transfer student outcomes
by helping institutional leaders and policymakers better
understand current outcomes and providing them with metrics for
benchmarking their performance.
Federal higher-education policy is in shambles. The strategy of
the past 40 years — to increase student aid, watch tuition rise,
and increase student aid again — has reached a breaking point.
Federal loans flow freely with few questions asked, giving
colleges every incentive to raise tuition and enroll more
students, but less reason to worry about whether those students
learn anything. Tuition at the average public four-year college
has nearly quadrupled since the early 1980s, pushing more
students into debt.
The 2016 edition of Education Week’s Quality Counts report—Called
to Account: New Directions in School Accountability—examines how
new state and federal strategies are transforming the assessment
of school performance and reshaping the consequences for poor
results. The new Every Student Succeeds Act is widely believed to
herald a shift in authority away from the federal government and
back to the states and school districts. Pressure is also
mounting for accountability systems to go beyond test scores and
incorporate other academic and non-academic factors in meaningful
ways.
Rising cost and lower government aid have made it even more
difficult for poor students to obtain a college degree today than
45 years ago.
The Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the U.S. — 45 Year
Trend Report, draws on U.S. Census statistics and educational
data to make the compelling and disturbing case that inequality
in obtaining a college education has substantially grown in the
past 45 years.
In a new Gallup survey of teachers, U.S. public school teachers
are closely split in their overall reaction to the Common Core
State Standards: 41% view the program positively and 44%
negatively. Even in terms of strong reactions, teachers’
attitudes are divided, with 15% saying their perceptions of the
initiative are “very positive” and 16% saying “very negative.”
Each year, hundreds of thousands of American students graduate
from high school and enter college without being adequately
prepared to succeed there. This is partly the result of
misaligned high school standards and higher education
expectations. There are real, sobering consequences: millions of
students have fallen short of earning a college degree.
The widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
and assessments presents a new opportunity to bridge the gap
between high school and higher education, according to a new
report released today by New America.
So as the July heat kicks in, we started wondering about the
whole idea. What, exactly, is summer school? How much does it
cost? And, the biggest question, does it work? In a nutshell, we
have no idea. “It’s been one of my pet peeves for years,” says
Kathy Christie, vice president of knowledge and information
management at the nonprofit Education Commission of the States.
She says there’s never been a push for anyone to collect data on
summer school. As a result there isn’t really good information
about any of those questions above.
Unchecked charter-school operators are exploiting South Florida’s
public school system, collecting taxpayer dollars for schools
that quickly shut down.
A recent spate of charter-school closings illustrates weaknesses
in state law: virtually anyone can open or run a charter school
and spend public education money with near impunity, a Sun
Sentinel investigation found.
Only a few years ago, the ambitious initiative to use shared
assessments to gauge learning based on the new common-core
standards had enlisted 45 states and the District of Columbia.
Today, the testing landscape looks much more fragmented, with
only 27 of them still planning to use those tests in 2014-15, and
the rest opting for other assessments or undecided, an
Education Week analysis shows.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the
development of what became known as the Common Core State
Standards. With more than $200 million, the foundation also
built political support across the country, persuading state
governments to make systemic and costly changes.
Opposition to the Common Core, a set of reading and math
standards for elementary, middle and high school students that
were originally adopted by 46 states and the District of
Columbia, has gathered momentum among state lawmakers in recent
weeks.
The governors of Oklahoma and South Carolina are considering
signing bills to repeal the standards and replace them with
locally written versions. In Missouri, lawmakers passed a bill
that would require a committee of state educators to come up with
new standards within the next two years.
As the majority of states continue to design and implement new
evaluation systems, the time is right to ask how existing teacher
evaluation systems are performing and in what practical ways they
might be improved.
This Brookings Institution report helps to answer those
questions by examining the actual design and performance of new
teacher evaluation systems in four urban school districts that
are at the forefront of the effort to meaningfully evaluate
teachers.
The Common Core State Standards have been reshaping the American
education landscape for four years, leaving their mark on
curriculum and instruction, professional development, teacher
evaluation, the business of publishing, and the way tests are
designed.
Andrew Ujifusa, Chienyi Cheri Hung, and Doris NhanEducation Week
Anxiety about and opposition to the Common Core State Standards
continues to highlight many debates about education policy. Now,
several states are reassessing, through legislation, their
involvement with the standards and associated assessments.
Governors have also issued executive orders regarding the
standards. As in 2013, many of the common-core bills aren’t
getting a great deal of traction, but that could change.
Education Week offers an interactive infographic that tracks the
status of such legislation and executive orders.
Texas public universities remain more affordable compared with
most states, though out-of-pocket costs for many families
continue to rise.That’s based on
a Dallas Morning News analysis of cost data that
colleges report to the federal government.
The published cost to attend a Texas public university averages
more than $20,000 a year for in-state students. Thanks to
financial aid, most students pay less than that.
If Common Core leaves you confused, you’re not alone.The academic
standards were adopted by most states with little fanfare, but
have generated much controversy of late.
Bystander intervention is so easy to grasp, even by the most
inexperienced college freshman, that the program may well be the
best hope for reducing sexual assaults on campuses. Mostly it is
common sense: If a drunk young man at a party is pawing a drunk
young woman, then someone nearby (the bystander) needs to step in
(intervene) and get one of them out of there. Of course, that can
be tricky at times.
Far From Home: Issues Facing First-Gen College Students
Every year, first-generation students across the country step onto college and university campuses that are different from their hometown in every way. Even for those financially and academically prepared, social and emotional challenges can influence their ability to stay and graduate.
This is the first of a four-part special report, “Far From Home.”
Trauma Lingers for Harvey Survivors Returning to School in Port Arthur
The mid-June clouds stark white and heavy with impending rain, Darby Dugay listened for the splatter of falling drops, noting that the foul weather might delay her basketball practice.
Nearly a year after Hurricane Harvey submerged coastal Port Arthur, the rain still brings the 17-year-old’s heart rate up, especially when water overflows the long-neglected drainage ditches lining the neighborhood’s sidewalks.
How the Startup Mentality Failed Kids in San Francisco
Huge contributions from tech titans, a STEM-packed curriculum, gadgets everywhere: Willie Brown Middle School was supposed to set the bar. Then it opened.
Betrayed: Chicago Schools Fail To Protect Students From Sexual Abuse
They were top athletes and honor-roll students, children struggling to read and teenagers seeking guidance.
But then they became prey, among the many students raped or sexually abused during the last decade by trusted adults working in the Chicago Public Schools as district officials repeated obvious child-protection mistakes.
Their lives were upended, their futures clouded and their pain unacknowledged as a districtwide problem was kept under wraps. A Tribune analysis indicates that hundreds of students were harmed.
Education Writers’ Conference Weighs School Violence, Teacher Unrest
Education journalists from across the nation gathered here this week with a focus on diversity in their profession, recent activism by teachers, and the scourge of school violence, among other topics.
The Education Writers Association’s top award for education reporting went to John Woodrow Cox of The Washington Post for a compelling three-part series on children and gun violence, which was published last June.
Parkland Shooting: Survivor Kyle Laman’s Journey to Recovery
He thought he’d be safe backstage, out of the spotlight, away from the shadows that prowled the edges of his vision when his guard was down.
Crowds spooked him now. It was seven weeks since he had locked eyes with a black-masked gunman taking aim at him in the midst of the worst school shooting in Florida’s history. Seven weeks since he’d made the split-second decision that saved his life but left a softball-sized hole in his leg. Seven weeks since he’d seen bullets lodging in the wall around him as he ran past bodies of his classmates in a wild panic to survive.
Children Face Potential Poisoning From Lead, Mold, Asbestos in Philadelphia Schools, Investigation Shows
Every school day in Philadelphia, children are exposed to a stew of environmental hazards, both visible and invisible, that can rob them of a healthy place to learn and thrive. Too often, the district knows of the perils but downplays them to parents.
As part of its “Toxic City” series, the Inquirer and Daily News investigated the physical conditions at district-run schools. Reporters examined five years of internal maintenance logs and building records, and interviewed 120 teachers, nurses, parents, students, and experts.
In Canada’s Public Schools, Immigrant Students Are Thriving
When 13-year-old André Cordeiro moved from rural Portugal to Toronto, the only English words he knew were, “hi,” “bye,” and “hot dog.” Four years later, he speaks English “way better” and credits the English-learner class he attends every morning at Islington Junior Middle School.
Views Among College Students Regarding the First Amendment: Results From a New Survey
College students’ views on the First Amendment are important for another reason as well: Students act as de facto arbiters of free expression on campus. The Supreme Court justices are not standing by at the entrances to public university lecture halls ready to step in if First Amendment rights are curtailed. If a significant percentage of students believe that views they find offensive should be silenced, those views will in fact be silenced.
As Cuomo Proposal Rekindles Free College Movement, New Research Provides Ammunition for Skeptics
Brookings Institution
In early January, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York announced his intention to make a public college education tuition-free for most students in the state. The proposal has breathed life back into the free college movement, which supporters feared would lose momentum under the incoming presidential administration. Instead, momentum has simply relocated (back) to the state level. Tennessee and Oregon already have their own “free college” initiatives, and just this week, Governor Gina Raimondo proposed a version for Rhode Island.
Higher Education: 2016 Elections Wrap-Up and 2017 Federal Policy Preview
American Association of State Colleges and Universities
Higher education issues took a more prominent role in the 2016 elections than any time in recent memory, college affordability and student debt levels catapulted higher education to the top of domestic policy concerns. Both major party nominees for president, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, included higher education proposals in their policy agendas, with Clinton offering the most expansive, ambitious higher education plan than any other major party candidate in decades.
Time for Action Building the Educator Workforce Our Children Need Now
Center on Great Teachers and Leaders
States are now deeply engaged in developing plans for their federal education spending for the next several years. Decades of experience and education research indicate that states must strengthen and organize the educator workforce to implement change successfully. Now is the time to rethink systems and strategies and to focus funds and efforts on what matters most for learning: great teachers and leaders for every student and school.
Teacher Effectiveness in the Every Student Succeeds Act: A Discussion Guide
Center on Great Teachers and Leaders
Systemic challenges in the educator workforce require thoughtful and bold actions, and ESSA presents a unique opportunity for states to reaffirm, modify, or improve their vision of educator effectiveness. This GTL Center discussion guide focuses on one challenge that states face as part of this work: defining ineffective teacher in the absence of highly qualified teacher (HQT) requirements.
Changes in Income-Based Gaps in Parent Activities with Young Children from 1988-2012
American Educational Research Association
Numerous studies show large differences between economically advantaged and disadvantaged parents in the quality and quantity of their engagement in young children’s development. This “parenting gap” may account for a substantial portion of the gap in children’s early cognitive skills. However, researchers know little about whether the socioeconomic gap in parenting has increased over time. The present study investigates this question, focusing on income- (and education) based gaps in parents’ engagement in cognitively stimulating activities with preschool-aged children.
The Promise and Peril of Predictive Analytics in Higher Education
New America
Predictive analytics–using massive amounts of historical data to predict future events–is a practice that’s making it easier and faster for colleges to decide which students to enroll and how to get them to graduation. But predictive analytics can aid in discriminatory practices, make institutional practices less transparent, and make vulnerable individuals’ data privacy and security.
Black-White Disparity in Student Loan Debt More Than Triples After Graduation
Brookings Institution
The moment they earn their bachelor’s degrees, black college graduates owe $7,400 more on average than their white peers ($23,400 versus $16,000, including non-borrowers in the averages). But over the next few years, the black-white debt gap more than triples to a whopping $25,000. Differences in interest accrual and graduate school borrowing lead to black graduates holding nearly $53,000 in student loan debt four years after graduation—almost twice as much as their white counterparts.
Seven Facts On Noncognitive Skills From Education To The Labor Market
The Hamilton Project
Cognitive skills—that is, math and reading skills that are measured by standardized tests—are generally understood to be of critical importance in the labor market. Most people find it intuitive and indeed unsurprising that cognitive skills, as measured by standardized tests, are important for students’ later-life outcomes. For example, earnings tend to be higher for those with higher levels of cognitive skills. What is less well understood—and is the focus of these economic facts—is that noncognitive skills are also integral to educational performance and labor-market outcomes.
The Learning Landscape
Bellwether Education Partners
This report examines the status of education in the United States by aggregating high quality research and data from numerous credible sources. Each chapter describes the context and the current state of play in each focus area – including student achievement, standards and testing; school finance, and charter schools, among others. It highlights key policy issues and trends affecting public education now and in the future.
Looking Under the Hood of Competency-Based Education
American Institutes for Research, Nellie Mae Education Foundation
Competency-based education (CBE), an instructional approach that emphasizes what students learn and master rather than how much time they spend in school, is gaining popularity nationwide. CBE environments provide students with personalized learning, autonomy, flexibility, and responsibility for their own learning, which is theorized to improved learning behaviors.
No More Free Lunch for Education Policymakers and Researchers
Brookings Institution
The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), like No Child Left Behind before it, requires states to report information on the academic achievement of students in each of their schools, both overall and for various subgroups of students. A subgroup of particular interest to policymakers and researchers is economically disadvantaged students, who, on average, score much lower on standardized tests than their higher-income peers.
Drop Out, Push Out, & School-to-Prison Pipeline
GLSEN
Educational Exclusion: Drop Out, Push Out, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline among LGBTQ Youth provides an in-depth look at the conditions that effectively push LGBTQ youth out of school and potentially into the criminal justice system. The report provides specific, real world guidance to address the hostile school climates and damaging policies and practices that contribute to pushing LGBTQ youth out of their schools.
Read the report.
This Is What Happens When Charter Schools Think Big
Match Beyond has a bodacious goal: To invent a college program that wipes out undergraduate debt and cures poverty.
Not the rarefied college designed for that by-the-bootstraps, defy-the-odds high school senior trotted out for interviews and inspirational speeches when visitors come to high-poverty schools looking for their scholarship success stories.
With ‘Blame and Shame’ Accountability Behind Us, What Will Take Its Place?
One of the most important and welcomed provisions of the Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA) is the removal of so-called adequate yearly progress – the federal mandate that came to symbolize everything that was wrong with the way No Child Left Behind defined and measured accountability. AYP imposed rigid and narrow measures for school improvement, improperly labeling many schools as low-performing and imposing punishment when they were unable to meet the unrealistic expectations for proficiency.
Construction Ahead: Are State Policies Building Bridges, Detours, or Roadblocks to College?
New America
Far far too many students, the path between high school and higher education is littered with detours and roadblocks. … “Mapping College Ready Policies 2015-16,” a data visualization project released earlier today by New America’s Education Policy Program, analyzes individual states’ progress towards addressing these challenges to ensure all students are on a sturdy bridge on their route from high school to higher education.
Beyond Ratings: Re-envisioning State Teacher Evaluation Systems as Tools for Professional Growth
New America
To date, most of the public narrative and pushback on new teacher evaluation systems has centered around their use for high-stakes personnel decisions such as pay, promotion, and dismissal. But these systems were always intended to promote and support improvements for all teachers—not just the superstars or laggards.
The Health of the Charter Public School Movement
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
The Health of the Charter Public School Movement: A State-by-State Analysis evaluates the health of the charter public school movement in key states across the country. Following the first report released in October 2014, this second edition measures movement growth, innovation, and quality, while this year doubling the number of quality measures. Due to these quality additions, a total of 18 states with charter school laws met the criteria for inclusion in this year’s report.
2016 State of the States: Arts Education State Policy Summary
Education Commission of the States
A new review released by the Arts Education Partnership (AEP), a policy center within the Education Commission of the States, offers a comprehensive look at state policies for arts education identified in statute or administrative code for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
National Benchmarks for State Achievement Standards
American Institutes for Research
State achievement standards represent how much the state expects their students to learn in order to reach various levels of academic proficiency. In the past, these achievement standards were used by each state to report adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind federal legislation, and are now being used for federal reporting under the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015.
Ensuring High-Quality Teacher Talent
Education First
As districts face the recurring problem of ensuring every student has access to a high-quality teacher, a growing number have begun to proactively form deep, mutually beneficial partnerships with teacher preparation programs to produce teacher candidates who match their specific needs. These partnerships, when done well, take significant time and resources on behalf of both parties, but have the ability to transform the work of both institutions.
Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and the Common Good Through College Admissions
Making Caring Common Project, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and the Common Good through College Admissions, represents the first time that a broad coalition of colleges and universities have joined forces in a unified effort calling for widespread change in the college admissions process. The report includes concrete recommendations to reshape the college admissions process and promote greater ethical engagement among aspiring students, reduce excessive achievement pressure, and level the playing field for economically disadvantaged students.
Trends in College Spending: 2003-2013 – Where Does the Money Come From? Where Does It Go? What Does It Buy?
American Institutes for Research
Trends in College Spending: 2003–2013 examines college and university finances during one of the most turbulent economic periods in decades. The financial ramifications of the 2008 recession were vast, affecting students’ ability to pay for college, lawmakers’ prioritization of public resources, and the budgetary environment facing higher education leaders. The challenges brought by the fiscal crisis also provided colleges and universities with an opportunity to reevaluate how they allocated resources and rethink how to manage costs and improve student outcomes.
Tracking Transfer: New Measures of Institutional and State Effectiveness in Helping Community College Students Attain Bachelor’s Degrees
Community College Research Center
This report is designed to help improve transfer student outcomes by helping institutional leaders and policymakers better understand current outcomes and providing them with metrics for benchmarking their performance.
Jeb Bush & Higher-Education Reform: Forget ‘Free College’
Andrew Kelly and Jason Delisle for National Review
Federal higher-education policy is in shambles. The strategy of the past 40 years — to increase student aid, watch tuition rise, and increase student aid again — has reached a breaking point. Federal loans flow freely with few questions asked, giving colleges every incentive to raise tuition and enroll more students, but less reason to worry about whether those students learn anything. Tuition at the average public four-year college has nearly quadrupled since the early 1980s, pushing more students into debt.
Quality Counts 2016: Report and Rankings
Education Week
The 2016 edition of Education Week’s Quality Counts report—Called to Account: New Directions in School Accountability—examines how new state and federal strategies are transforming the assessment of school performance and reshaping the consequences for poor results. The new Every Student Succeeds Act is widely believed to herald a shift in authority away from the federal government and back to the states and school districts. Pressure is also mounting for accountability systems to go beyond test scores and incorporate other academic and non-academic factors in meaningful ways.
The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education
Rising cost and lower government aid have made it even more difficult for poor students to obtain a college degree today than 45 years ago.
The Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the U.S. — 45 Year Trend Report, draws on U.S. Census statistics and educational data to make the compelling and disturbing case that inequality in obtaining a college education has substantially grown in the past 45 years.
U.S. Teachers Offer Split Decision on Common Core
In a new Gallup survey of teachers, U.S. public school teachers are closely split in their overall reaction to the Common Core State Standards: 41% view the program positively and 44% negatively. Even in terms of strong reactions, teachers’ attitudes are divided, with 15% saying their perceptions of the initiative are “very positive” and 16% saying “very negative.”
Common Core Goes To College
Each year, hundreds of thousands of American students graduate from high school and enter college without being adequately prepared to succeed there. This is partly the result of misaligned high school standards and higher education expectations. There are real, sobering consequences: millions of students have fallen short of earning a college degree.
The widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and assessments presents a new opportunity to bridge the gap between high school and higher education, according to a new report released today by New America.
What We Don’t Know About Summer School
So as the July heat kicks in, we started wondering about the whole idea. What, exactly, is summer school? How much does it cost? And, the biggest question, does it work? In a nutshell, we have no idea. “It’s been one of my pet peeves for years,” says Kathy Christie, vice president of knowledge and information management at the nonprofit Education Commission of the States. She says there’s never been a push for anyone to collect data on summer school. As a result there isn’t really good information about any of those questions above.
Florida’s Charter Schools: Unsupervised Investigation
Unchecked charter-school operators are exploiting South Florida’s public school system, collecting taxpayer dollars for schools that quickly shut down.
A recent spate of charter-school closings illustrates weaknesses in state law: virtually anyone can open or run a charter school and spend public education money with near impunity, a Sun Sentinel investigation found.
National Landscape Fragments as States Plan Common-Core Testing
Only a few years ago, the ambitious initiative to use shared assessments to gauge learning based on the new common-core standards had enlisted 45 states and the District of Columbia. Today, the testing landscape looks much more fragmented, with only 27 of them still planning to use those tests in 2014-15, and the rest opting for other assessments or undecided, an Education Week analysis shows.
How Bill Gates Pulled Off The Swift Common Core Revolution
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards. With more than $200 million, the foundation also built political support across the country, persuading state governments to make systemic and costly changes.
Common Core School Standards Face a New Wave of Opposition
Opposition to the Common Core, a set of reading and math standards for elementary, middle and high school students that were originally adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia, has gathered momentum among state lawmakers in recent weeks.
The governors of Oklahoma and South Carolina are considering signing bills to repeal the standards and replace them with locally written versions. In Missouri, lawmakers passed a bill that would require a committee of state educators to come up with new standards within the next two years.
Evaluating Teachers With Classroom Observations
Lessons Learned in Four Districts
As the majority of states continue to design and implement new evaluation systems, the time is right to ask how existing teacher evaluation systems are performing and in what practical ways they might be improved.
This Brookings Institution report helps to answer those questions by examining the actual design and performance of new teacher evaluation systems in four urban school districts that are at the forefront of the effort to meaningfully evaluate teachers.
Common Core at Four: Sizing Up the Enterprise
The Common Core State Standards have been reshaping the American education landscape for four years, leaving their mark on curriculum and instruction, professional development, teacher evaluation, the business of publishing, and the way tests are designed.
Common-Core Backlash: Track State Efforts
Anxiety about and opposition to the Common Core State Standards continues to highlight many debates about education policy. Now, several states are reassessing, through legislation, their involvement with the standards and associated assessments. Governors have also issued executive orders regarding the standards. As in 2013, many of the common-core bills aren’t getting a great deal of traction, but that could change.
Education Week offers an interactive infographic that tracks the status of such legislation and executive orders.
Texas Public Universities Are More Affordable Compared with Most States
Texas public universities remain more affordable compared with most states, though out-of-pocket costs for many families continue to rise.That’s based on a Dallas Morning News analysis of cost data that colleges report to the federal government.
The published cost to attend a Texas public university averages more than $20,000 a year for in-state students. Thanks to financial aid, most students pay less than that.
Common Core 101: A Primer To Separate Education Fact From Fiction
If Common Core leaves you confused, you’re not alone.The academic standards were adopted by most states with little fanfare, but have generated much controversy of late.
Stepping Up to Stop Sexual Assault
Bystander intervention is so easy to grasp, even by the most inexperienced college freshman, that the program may well be the best hope for reducing sexual assaults on campuses. Mostly it is common sense: If a drunk young man at a party is pawing a drunk young woman, then someone nearby (the bystander) needs to step in (intervene) and get one of them out of there. Of course, that can be tricky at times.