In the 40+ years since the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was enacted, the law has changed the landscape for students with disabilities. This report is the result of a working meeting of special education experts and stakeholders held to consider the challenges and opportunities for strengthening special education ...
As a counterpoint to the increasingly common media reports on school boards that highlight dysfunction and disruption, this report profiles two California school districts—Napa Valley and San José Unified School Districts—that have collaborative and productive approaches to governance.
Contributing and working alongside Native Nations, AIR has a deep commitment to engaging communities, fostering shared vision and values, building capacity, and developing strategic alliances to achieve sustainable systems change in Indian Country.
Using administrative longitudinal data from five states, this report looks at how value-added measures of teacher performance are affected by changes in state standards and assessments. In most cases, the researchers found that measures of teacher value added are similarly stable in transition years and nontransition years. ...
Developing reliable and valid national-level survey measures of instructional processes and other classroom conditions related to learning has proven exceptionally difficult. This report focuses on the size of the impact that can be expected from instruction and teachers on student achievement and on the conceptualization of measures of instruction and ...
Despite large investments and efforts, schools and districts have long struggled to provide ongoing, effective, and sustained support for teachers’ professional development. This study examined the experiences of teachers in six schools participating in one of three teacher network programs during the 2016–17 school year. ...
This report delivers an overview of the site visit component of the TTT evaluation. Specifically, it describes the process that was used to select the eight sites and provides a snapshot of each; discusses major themes that emerged from the data and relates them to the literature on alternative certification ...
In an era of increasingly rigorous state standards, teachers at all grade levels face heightened expectations to deepen their students’ understanding of mathematical concepts. This report examines the impact of content-intensive professional development on teachers’ math content knowledge, their instructional practice, and their students’ achievement. ...
The effort to link statistically student achievement to measures of teaching or teachers has proven very difficult. Analysts generally agree that the impacts of effective teachers on student achievement are important. The problem for analysts has been in identifying the characteristics of high quality teaching or teachers. ...
How does the civil rights movement of the 1960s continue to shape all aspects of society, including educational opportunities and outcomes for children? In November 2018, a group of AIR staff had the opportunity to better understand this legacy by participating in a civil rights learning journey across the South. ...