U.S. businesses are facing challenges filling so-called “middle-skills” jobs in trades, telecommunications, health care, IT, and similar professions. Career and Technical Education (CTE) is an existing and promising pathway that can address this gap.
Teachers are the number-one factor in student learning, so preparing and supporting high-quality teachers of computer science is critical. AIR is working with states, districts, and teachers to implement and test three promising strategies to strengthen teacher preparation and development:
In a longitudinal, quasi-experimental study that spanned more than a decade, AIR found that attending a high school with an explicit focus on deeper learning resulted in positive short-term outcomes, but few longer-term outcomes. In this Q&A, AIR Principal Researcher Kristina Zeiser and Senior Researcher Catherine Bitter share insights about ...
The White House and U.S. Department of Education are celebrating today two federal education technology initiatives undertaken by AIR. The Office of Educational Technology released the 2016 National Education Technology Plan on the one-year anniversary of Future Ready, an effort to increase digital learning opportunities. The plan, written for educators, ...
A new book, edited and authored by experts from AIR and their colleagues, presents comprehensive strategies and tools to help create strong conditions for learning in schools that can lead to excellent and equitable student outcomes.
Parents, teachers, schools, districts, states, and especially students all want schools that prepare graduates to thrive in the 21st century. In this blog post, Anne Mishkind asks what it means to be "college and career ready."
While the K-12 public school student population grows more diverse, many schools remain divided along racial, ethnic, and economic lines. The Bridges Collaborative, a first-of-its-kind school initiative of The Century Foundation, aims to change that. An interdisciplinary team of AIR researchers and experts is studying this initiative-in-progress for insights. ...
The American Institutes for Research (AIR) has issued a policy brief summarizing the findings of its research on structuring instructional resources and practices for full-day kindergarten programs to increase children's reading achievement and better prepare them for first grade.
Given persistent failure rates and mounting student debt, how prepared students are to enter and succeed in college is suddenly everyone’s business. According to Mark Schneider, in this blog post, ACT data shows many students ready to leave for college are not ready academically in at least one area. ...
In this blog post, Peter Cookson says it's time to address the idea of educational rights, asserting that the arc of justice needs to bend in the direction of a universal, free public school system where excellence is distributed not by zip code, skin color, or socio-economic status but as ...