High-quality preschool programs can have far reaching benefits for kids, parents, and communities—and they can provide a high return on initial investments. This 10 Series report summarizes our key findings about local preschool initiatives in 10 U.S. communities.
This report provides a broad overview of state efforts, as of the 2011-12 school year, to monitor equitable access to qualified and effective teachers among schools; develop and adopt multiple measures of teacher performance to rate teachers among at least three performance levels; and implement targeted strategies for promoting equitable ...
This CALDER Center paper examines the value of strategically assigning disproportionately larger classes to the strongest teachers in order to optimize student learning in the face of differential teacher effectiveness. The rationale is straightforward: Larger classes for the best teachers benefit the pupils who are reassigned to them; they also ...
This second in a series of briefs on the Fresno-Long Beach Learning Partnership focuses on the leadership practices of Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson and Long Beach Unified Superintendent Christopher Steinhauser and the ways in which their partnership strengthens the strategies they employ. ...
Response to intervention (RTI) is a multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement and reduce behavioral problems. Dia Jackson describes the importance of implementing RTI with fidelity and how she provides coaching and professional development to schools so that they see gains in student achievement. ...
New educator evaluation systems require measures of teacher effectiveness that are timely and meaningful, and many new systems specifically require measures of student growth. Student learning objectives (SLOs) are emerging as innovative measures of student growth because of their versatility and potential for promoting good teaching practices. This fact sheet ...
As part of a larger inter-agency effort to develop new federal data on adults’ education, training, and credentials for work, the National Center for Education Statistics and AIR developed and pilot-tested of a set of survey items on industry-recognized certification, state licensure, and educational certificates. ...
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Wraparound Zones (WAZ) Initiative is designed to create coordinated district systems that allow schools to proactively and systematically address the nonacademic needs of students. AIR conducted an evaluation of how well the WAZ Initiative achieved these goals, which found improvements in student ...
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."
This article, published in Winter 2013 issue of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, stresses the importance of identifying how a community views education—whether it is seen as an indomitable evil or a leverageable asset, or both—when providing EFA interventions. How these perceptions are understood and addressed mean the difference ...