Decades of research show that fully certified and experienced teachers matter for student achievement. Yet, providing all students with equitable access to such teachers has long been a struggle in U.S. schools. This report analyzes data from the U.S. Department of Education's two most recent years of the biannual Civil Rights Data Collection…

This brief summarizes lessons from "positive outlier" districts in California that have excelled at helping African American, Latino/a, and White students achieve at high levels on new assessments of academic standards in English language arts and mathematics, after accounting for students' socioeconomic status. Drawing on case studies…

For years now, educators have looked to international tests as a yardstick to measure how well students from the United States are learning compared with their peers. The answer has been: not so well. The United States has been falling further behind other nations and has struggled with a large achievement gap. Federal policy under No Child Left…

In 1968, the Kerner Commission Report concluded that the nation was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal." Without major social changes, the Commission warned, the U.S. faced a "system of apartheid" in its major cities. Today, 50 years after the report was issued, that prediction…

Despite the American promise of equal educational opportunity for all students, persistent achievement gaps among more and less advantaged groups of students remain, along with the opportunity gaps that create disparate outcomes. However, the recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) represents an opportunity for the federal…

U.S. education has experienced many waves of reform in responding to rapid changes in knowledge, technologies, and the economy. It is now widely accepted that, to succeed in the future, all young people must have the opportunity to develop critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and communication competencies--often referred to as…

Despite the American promise of equal educational opportunity for all students, persistent achievement gaps among more and less advantaged groups of students remain, along with the opportunity gaps that create disparate outcomes. However, the recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) represents an opportunity for the federal…

The fact that well-qualified teachers are inequitably distributed to students in the United States has received growing public attention. By every measure of qualifications--certification, subject matter background, pedagogical training, selectivity of college attended, test scores, or experience--less-qualified teachers tend to be found in…

"Student-Centered Schools: Closing the Opportunity Gap" documents the practices and outcomes of four urban high schools that, through student-centered approaches, are preparing their students for success in college, career, and life by providing them with the building blocks of knowledge and skills they will need as adults. The schools…

The poor U.S. standing on international tests is a product of unequal access to the kind of intellectually challenging learning they measure. While other nations have been expanding educational access to more and more of their people and revising curricula, instruction, and assessments to support the more complex knowledge and skills, the U.S. has…

Now more than ever, high-quality education for all is a public good that is essential for the good of the public. As the fate of individuals and nations is increasingly interdependent, the quest for access to an equitable, empowering education for all people has become a critical issue for the American nation as a whole. No society can thrive in a…

This report synthesizes what research says works in improving teacher skills and knowledge, what nations that outperform the United States in education are doing, and provides an analysis of newly available data from the federal Schools and Staffing Survey and other sources to indicate where the nation stands in building the capacity of educators…

A major school district in Philadelphia has been taken over, handed out and chopped up. The for-profit Edison schools opened in Philadelphia, just as Dallas had asked them to leave for a lack of measurable improvement in schools. Linda Darling-Hammond frames this article around what happened in Philadelphia because she feels that in some ways it…