Thirty years after the release of the landmark A Nation at Risk report on the quality of U.S. education, seven experts with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) assess the report’s lasting impact in relation to current education challenges and reforms.
In this blog post, published as part of the work of the Midwest Comprehensive Center, Chris Times and Fausto López describe how educators and students in Chicago are proving that diligence and data-informed decision making can lead to positive changes.
Repackaging findings in an accessible way for practitioners to understand may be a good first step towards research impact, but without practitioner involvement from the outset, the research may still be deemed irrelevant. In this commentary originally published on the London School of Economics and Political Science's Impact Blog, Julie ...
Title II, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act aims to increase academic achievement by improving teacher and principal quality. In this blog post, Jane Coggshall describes her recommendations to ensure that states, regions, and districts work more strategically both to develop individual teachers and leaders and to ...
Teacher shortages are widely reported across the United States. But is there more to the story? Research sheds light on the widely-debated questions of shortages, their causes, severity, and ways to respond.
A report comparing the first-year earnings of graduates with two-year and four-year degrees – as well as those with master's and certificates – from public colleges and universities in Texas finds that the median first-year earnings of certificate holders often exceeds those of graduates from associate's programs. ...
This first-of-its-kind report provides a comparison of the mathematics and science skills of 8th-grade students in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Department of Defense schools with those of their counterparts around the world.
A new report from the Delta Cost Project at AIR—Academic Spending Versus Athletic Spending: Who Wins?—also shows that athletic costs increased at least twice as fast as academic spending, on a per-capita basis, across each of the three Division I subdivisions between 2005 and 2010.
This spotlight takes a look at the history of Title I, how the program has changed over time, and how it affects children, schools, families and education policy. Experts weigh in on the program's past and future in interviews, briefs, and blogs.
There is a growing evidence base on the effectiveness of selective alternative certification programs like Teach for America and TNTP. In this blog post, Hans Bos and Dean Gerdeman draw on a recent AIR report to examine how teachers who receive credentials through TNTP’s alternative certification program compare to their ...