May 17 marks the 66th anniversary of the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. The court’s unanimous ruling outlawed racial segregation in public schools, citing a violation of the equal protection clause under the Fourteenth Amendment.
States and school districts have made significant investments in systems to measure teacher performance, with the ultimate goal of improving student learning. The Beyond Accountability project aimed to improve instructional quality, increase teacher satisfaction with opportunities or mechanisms to improve their practice, and increase district capacity to engage in improvement ...
In 2014, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) moved away from a state-supported policy that placed all Grade 8 students in Algebra I due concerns about poor student outcomes and growing achievement gaps. A new policy and practice brief from the California Collaborative on District Reform, an initiative of ...
The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) established the Center on Technology and Disability, a five-year technical assistance center, to increase knowledge of evidence-based assistive technology and instructional technology practices, and that effort was led by AIR. ...
Systemic challenges in the educator workforce require thoughtful and bold actions, and ESSA presents a unique opportunity for states to reaffirm, modify, or improve their vision of educator effectiveness. This discussion guide focuses on one challenge that states face as part of this work: defining ineffective teacher in the absence ...
To improve overall educational attainment and support equitable outcomes, it is critical to support working-age adults’ enrollment in postsecondary education—focusing especially on adult learners of color. This project, supported by Lumina Foundation, aims to help leaders at postsecondary institutions and state system offices design programs in ways that support the ...
Student achievement depends on an array of factors within and beyond the classroom environment. Even within classrooms, a complex interplay of factors affects achievement. These factors include not only the curriculum but also teaching practices. In this paper, we are interested in two associated pilot programs, consisting of professional development, ...
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.
The Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) Community Schools initiative aims to support students, their families, and the broader school community by creating partnerships among district schools and community-based organizations and providers. AIR conducted an evaluation of the implementation of the Community Schools initiative in PPS with all five schools adopting the ...
States and school districts have made significant investments in systems to measure teacher performance, with the ultimate goal of improving student learning. In this report, AIR experts share their findings from the two-year Beyond Accountability project, in which four school districts identified a specific problem of practice and used plan-do-study-act ...