Making the world a better and more informed place drives AIR board members, fellows, and staff. These recent books examine pressing issues in depth, drawing on the best research available to understand complex challenges and offer practical solutions.
Having a more effective teacher or principal can substantially improve students’ academic outcomes. This brief examines the effects of using research-based performance measures to evaluate educators and provide them with feedback, and of offering them bonuses based on their performance ratings.
Getting a job is about more than academic performance. In this blog post, Kimberly Kendziora discusses the growing body of research on the importance of social and emotional skills, such as self-management, social awareness, and relationship skills.
States and schools are shifting their focus to ensure college and career readiness is a realistic and attainable goal for all students. This brief provides an overview of competency-based education, one model to support college and career readiness for all.
Competency-based education is an educational approach that focuses on mastery of an expanded set of competencies—rather than seat time—as a measure of student learning. This brief explores how states and districts can define learner competencies that reflect the full range of knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for students to achieve ...
This guide provides a review of research on higher education persistence indicators that can be used to predict whether a student will remain enrolled in college and complete a two- or four-year degree.
Deeper learning combines a deeper understanding of core academic content, the ability to apply that understanding to new situations, and a range of competencies related to human interaction and self-management. A recent study by AIR found that students in high schools that were part of networks associated with the William ...
The root causes of youth violence are similar in communities across the globe, but community responses to improve public safety and well-being vary considerably. To address this need in the Latin America and Caribbean region, the USAID selected AIR to conduct a global review of the evidence on youth violence ...
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: