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."
Though most public school principals believe that effective leadership of their schools requires authority over personnel decisions, they report having little such authority in practice. That's a key finding of a new study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and AIR. Based on a series of interviews with a small ...
Student agency, or the ability to manage one’s learning, can have significant effects on academic achievement as students take an active role in seeking and internalizing new knowledge. The purpose of this study was to identify the instructional practices that may be useful for the development of different aspects of ...
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 his final State of the Union address, President Obama said, “We live in a time of extraordinary change… and whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.” In this blog post, AIR’s Peter Cookson says the key to dealing with this change is ...
For adult learners with dependent children, pursuing postsecondary education is complicated. An AIR study explores the fact that better supporting adult learners means making significant changes to the learner experience at postsecondary institutions, and in this blog the researchers focus specifically on findings that are particularly meaningful for parenting adult ...
At 21, many foster youth “age out” of financial benefits and supports from the child welfare system—before they even finish college. Given the challenges they face, it’s not surprising that only 3 to 10 percent of them earn undergraduate degrees compared with 34 percent of young adults who weren’t in ...
Many innovative workforce training programs have sought to make a meaningful impact on low-income individuals’ lives through training and employment supports, though most fail to show long-term positive effects. AIR is seeking to partner with best-in-class sectoral programs to provide technical assistance and research expertise that strengthen their programming and ...
A series of state-specific websites, grounded in work conducted by AIR, will offer students a new way to plan for life after high school. Its interactive features show the potential return on investment for a wide array of higher education choices. The “Launch My Career” website will help students identify ...
A new report drawing on the work of experts in science, technology, engineering and math sets forth an aspirational future for STEM education, one that emphasizes problem-solving, interdisciplinary approaches, and the value of discovery and play. The 10-year vision, synthesized by AIR for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of ...