A healing-centered community school is intentionally designed and organized to support student well-being as both a facet of learning and an ultimate goal. This practice brief describes the core practices of implementing comprehensive community school strategies. Healing-centered community schools must be organized so that students, educators,…

Research reveals better school and student outcomes, especially for teachers and children of color, when a principal of color is at the helm. One way to improve the educational experiences of schoolchildren across the country is to increase their access to leaders of color--and strengthen the caliber of teaching and leading in our nation's…

Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. students attend rural schools. Researchers report that at least half of public schools are rural in 12 states (i.e., Montana, South Dakota, Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Alaska, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Mississippi) (Showalter et al., 2019). Providing quality education to all rural students is a…

This paper examines online collaboration between small rural primary schools in New Zealand, focusing on principals' perspectives. Through semi-structured interviews with eight principals involved in the Virtual Learning Network (VLN) Primary, the study explores the benefits, challenges, and key factors for successful collaboration. The findings…

This report examines the status of women in North Carolina in terms of their employment, earnings, and occupations. The report includes an Employment & Earnings Composite Index comprised of four indicators--women's median annual earnings, the gender wage ratio, women's labor force participation rate, and the share of employed women in…

This issue brief is the first in a series examining timely topics that are relevant to Black families and children in the United States. The series identifies key information and opportunities for consideration by policymakers, researchers, practitioners, philanthropists, and others interested in supporting the progress of Black families and…

Charter school authorizing is a powerful strategy for making excellent public schools and educational opportunities available to all students and communities, especially those who are historically under-resourced. Done well, authorizing increases student achievement by expanding the supply of quality public schools. Because authorizing is a…

In 2021, Child Trends was selected to conduct a literature review and develop a policy and practice report to map the history of systemic racism in the U.S. and how it has influenced early childhood education (ECE) policy and practice, with a particular focus on educator pay and benefits, preparation, and workforce stability. This report…

Native American students are a demographic group that has consistently been underrepresented in institutions of higher education (IHEs) in the United States. Despite tremendous growth in the enrollment of these students in recent years, they are still underrepresented compared to other subgroups. While other minority students encompass about 29%…

This report provides an overview of kindergarten readiness of six Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) kindergarten cohorts from the 2016-17 to the 2021-22 school year. This report is accompanied by the Annual Digest of City Schools Kindergarten Statistics, 2022 Edition (Baltimore Education Research Consortium [BERC], 2022), which provides…

To help students leave high school on a path toward success in the labor market, education policymakers and practitioners often focus on improving career and technical education (CTE) opportunities in high school. Understanding the alignment between high school CTE programs and the labor market is an important step in this process. To support CTE…

To help students leave high school on a path toward success in the labor market, education policymakers and practitioners often focus on improving career and technical education (CTE) opportunities in high school. This study quantifies the system-level alignment between West Virginia's high school CTE programs and the labor market. West Virginia…

Building on the Center for American Progress' workforce equity framework, which proposes creating and filling quality jobs with career options for all workers, this report proposes changing workforce accountability standards in order to drive labor markets toward quality job creation. It argues for restructuring workforce accountability from its…

State policymakers are confronting well-documented intersecting crises -- medical, economic, and racial -- with especially dire implications for educational equity. State education leaders face a moral urgency to both understand and respond to the challenges students are experiencing and to do so in ways that address burgeoning equity gaps.…

"The Status of Women in North Carolina: Political Participation" is the third in a series of four publications on women's status in North Carolina. This report presents data on several aspects of women's involvement in the political process in the North Carolina, comparing North Carolina to other states and the United States overall. The…