The U.S. Department of Education’s new regulations for teacher preparation programs ask states and organizations that prepare teachers to provide much more data about graduates’ competence, their persistence in the teacher workforce, and their impact on student learning. But is this the right data needed to improve teaching? In this ...
School teachers have been taking attendance since there were school teachers. It turns out that the simple act of noting who is missing—and then doing something about it in a systematic way—may be a key element in student success. In this blog post, David Blumenthal shares the latest research ...
Successive federal efforts to tackle the entrenched challenges of persistently low-performing schools have fallen far short of their goal. In this blog post, Kerstin Le Floch and Catherine Barbour offer three ways ESEA can build capacity in low-performing schools.
Through the national Comprehensive Centers Program and Regional Education Laboratories, AIR is building states’ capacity to support their districts and schools—and ultimately improve teaching and learning for all students, including special populations such as English learners and those with special needs. ...
When teachers learn, students learn. For decades, AIR has conducted studies of teacher professional learning and helped practitioners use evidence to develop, implement, test, and scale professional learning programs.
Evidence plays a critical role in designing and implementing approaches that accelerate learning and provide all students with equal access to a quality education. This blog post describes some of what AIR has learned about the approaches in the federal agenda.
Access to in-prison education and work experience are associated with a reduction in the likelihood of recidivism and provide inmates with a critical element on the path to reshape their personal identities. Could offering prisoners more education and work experience inside prison be a key solution to mass incarceration in ...
Postsecondary competency-based education (CBE) is receiving considerable attention from advocates, colleges, and policymakers as a way to help more students complete high-quality postsecondary credentials in less time and at a lower cost—but we're just beginning to build rigorous evidence to understand whether CBE programs are fulfilling those value propositions. ...
In a rare occurrence, PISA, TIMSS, and NAEP assessments are releasing science and math results in the same year. Chances are the results from the various assessments won’t all tell the same story. So what do you need to know to make sense of this bumper crop of assessments? In ...