Our nation’s lowest performing schools have traditionally struggled to offer students the instruction and supports they deeply need. The first phase of the federal School Improvement Grant Program targeted the goal of turning around these schools and improving learning for students. This report examines the first year of SIG implementation ...
An AIR report finds that Pennsylvania’s system for financing public schools severely underfunds many of the state’s highest need urban and rural public school districts. The report found that the average levels of both school spending and student achievement in Pennsylvania are above the national average, but fail to meet ...
Unlike transitional bilingual programs that mainly seek to prepare English learners for general education classrooms, dual language programs aim to develop students’ literacy and content area knowledge in both English and a partner language, such as Spanish or Chinese. In this blog post, Andrea Boyle and Lisa Tabaku discuss their ...
The Common Core State Standards represent an exciting step forward for California and for the nation as a whole in supporting strong instruction that can better prepare students for college and career success. As educators embrace the challenges associated with assessment of the Common Core, it is instructive to learn ...
How do the condition, design, and use of facilities affect student achievement, teacher quality, teacher retention, and community support? In this blog post, Mark Schneider notes that this is a critical issue that too few understand, and suggests we need to know much more about the condition of our school ...
College students now expect tuition bills 4 to 6 percent higher than they paid the year before. That often means students in four-year public universities pay several hundred dollars more annually while students at private universities shell out upwards of a thousand dollars more each year. What is all this ...
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.
Charter school stakeholders in South Carolina expressed interest in understanding the leadership characteristics and practices of charter school leaders across the state. Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast helped develop an online survey of characteristics and practices that was administered by the South Carolina Department of Education to leaders of all charter ...
Are teachers working in charter schools more effective in improving student outcomes compared to teachers working in traditional public schools? In this blog post, Umut Özek, a principal researcher at AIR, describes a new study in which he and his fellow authors examined the disparities in teacher effectiveness between charter ...
Drawing on interviews with district leaders as well as focus groups with coaches, specialists and principals, this brief describes the Fresno-Long Beach Learning Partnership’s work in two of the four areas that the districts selected as key leverage points for district action: mathematics and English learner instruction. ...