Community violence—violence between people who are unrelated, usually outside the home—is a widespread problem that impacts all of us, but particularly people who are disproportionately impacted by poverty, racism, and a lack of educational and economic opportunities. AIR partners with diverse sectors at the national, state, and local levels to ...
School improvement policy for the past few decades has been characterized by mandated lists of activities designed to stimulate a dramatic turnaround in student achievement. In the long run, this policy approach did not engender the necessary school-level changes. This brief demonstrates why new policies must aim to get the ...
For struggling schools, partnerships with external experts can seem like a critical lifeline. The reality of school turnaround partnerships, however, does not always resemble the ideal. What qualities of an external partnership indicate a greater likelihood for success? What actions by school administrators may make these relationships more effective? ...
Today, success isn’t just about what you know. It’s also about how quickly you can grasp and apply new knowledge. That’s the theory behind “deeper learning,” a broad term encompassing the goals of an increasing number of U.S. schools and school systems. In a series of reports, researchers at AIR ...
AIR researchers work with schools’, districts’, and states’ own data to identify the indicators that signal students’ readiness for key educational milestones. Starting with indicators drawn from the literature, AIR experts perform appropriate statistical analysis using state-, district-, or school-level data to identify which indicators accurately predict which students are ...
Overall, performance of low-performing schools (both those participating and not participating in the HPSGP) is improving in an era in which state and federal accountability systems have been introduced.
As part of recent reforms, states and districts are designing new approaches to holding schools and districts accountable for moving their students closer to achieving state standards in key academic domains. AIR and its partners contracted with the California Department of Education to conduct an independent evaluation of the Immediate ...
People with disabilities who receive high-quality education and health care are better positioned to enter the workforce and participate in their communities. They are prepared to benefit not only themselves, but their families, employers, and communities. AIR’s diverse portfolio of work on disability issues provides both expertise and resources to ...
The initiatives to enhance adult learning program accountability and assessment systems of the following states are described in this paper: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Oregon, Texas, Washington, West Virginia.
As a counterpoint to the increasingly common media reports on school boards that highlight dysfunction and disruption, this report profiles two California school districts—Napa Valley and San José Unified School Districts—that have collaborative and productive approaches to governance.