AIR evaluates early care and education programs and policies at the federal, state and local level. AIR evaluations help identify best practices and lead to recommendations for improving program quality and outcomes, with an eye toward system-wide implementation.
Credentials certify performance based on a set of defined skills and knowledge and allow established or emerging staff to be recognized for their competence and commitment to professional growth. To date, though research suggests that well-trained staff, such as those with credentials, are more likely to deliver high quality programs, ...
Community colleges are one of the pillars of the workforce development system in the United States. Through our work on community college workforce programs, the PROMISE Center at AIR aims to build a better understanding of what makes effective programs work so that those insights can be applied more broadly ...
Core competencies are the capabilities that are critical for afterschool staff to deliver high quality programs. These competencies are intended to set a foundation for professional development, provide opportunities for career advancement, and inform program quality and continuous improvement.
Your state has successfully designed a set of quality standards for the afterschool field, and practitioners are now using the standards across the state to improve their program practices. But are you really done? As the field advances, you may need to adapt the standards or add new components for ...
The Plan, Do, Study, Act Process is central to the improvement of instructional routines. Watch one of the Better Math Teaching Network members in real time and in a real classroom setting introduce the Plan, Do, Study, Act, or PDSA, process.
Developing a rationale and approach for expanding access to preschool or other early care and education(ECE) programs is an important part of the planning process. AIR offers tools for planning and budgeting for quality preschool initiatives on a “system-wide” basis, such as within a state, county, city, or one or ...
A shared vision for using 21st CCLC funds as a platform for improving the lives of students and families, and for contributing to community cohesion, is an important precursor to leveraging the full potential of community and school partnerships.
These teaching ideas are instructional routines teachers can implement in their classrooms to help students become more deeply and actively engaged in understanding algebra. The ideas focus on how teachers can help students better engage, defined as making deep mathematical connections, justifying and critiquing mathematical thinking, and solving challenging problems ...
The Guide for Reflecting on Instructional Depth, or GRID, helps teachers reflect on their instruction, identify areas where they can be more student-centered. The four-part video GRID series provides step-by-step guidance for determining students’ depth of mathematical justifications and who is driving those justifications. ...