In 1906, the Carnegie unit, or credit hour, was introduced to standardize U.S. public education. It defined the precise number of minutes students needed to learn a particular subject and the number of credit hours required to earn a high school or college degree. At the dawn of the 20th century, the Carnegie unit served the important purpose of…

The purpose of this study was to identify the components of effective blended learning (BL) that administrators and teachers in a K-12 setting perceived as having the most significant impact on student achievement. The Commonwealth of Learning's (2018) Blended Course Learnability Evaluation Checklist was used as a framework to create an online…

This report summarizes the fiscal effects of education choice programs across the United States from an analysis of 48 private education choice programs in 25 states plus D.C. The programs in the analysis include five education savings account programs, 22 school voucher programs, and 21 tax credit scholarship programs. This study estimates the…

The purpose of this article is to examine ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the adoption and perception of virtual programs in Indiana public school districts. This mixed-methods sequential explanatory study focuses on beliefs held by Indiana public school superintendents and virtual program administrators regarding the growth of…

The Region 8 Comprehensive Center collaborated with the Indiana Department of Education to evaluate the obstacles many districts face in the teacher hiring process. The brief further discusses the importance of hiring timelines, benefits and barriers of early hiring, and recommendations and strategies for revising hiring timelines.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has had drastic effects on K-12 teachers. Researchers partnered with a teacher advisory board to identify factors associated with K-12 teachers' consideration of leaving teaching during Fall 2020. METHODS: A web-based survey focused on teachers' working experiences was emailed to school union membership listservs…

We live in an era of rapid technological change. Not only must citizens contend with social problems presented by new and more invasive technologies, but they must also make sense of older technologies that can be viewed as natural to the world. We sought to answer the question, how is technology included and framed in K-12 content social studies…

This qualitative narrative inquiry studied the career journeys of five Black school principals from Indiana with five or more years of experience in their role. The purpose of this study was to understand the following: (a) the experiences of each participant including who influenced them to pursue the principal role, (b) their successful…

Accreditation holds a place within accountability systems as a mechanism to evaluate quality that leads to the practices that certify credentials. In K-12 school district these credentials manifest in curriculum, instruction, standards, and ultimately the certifying of credits that lead to receipt of a diploma. School district leadership would…

Faculty and staff in higher education are motivated to engage in college programs by different factors. Award programs can be a tool to engage faculty and staff in programs. This study described the perceived benefits of an engagement award that recognized faculty and staff that had excelled in outreach and program engagement. Data included…

This study analyzed the vision, operations, and governance structure of state legislature on the College and Career Readiness (CCR) education policy to identify the decision-making process and opportunities and gaps for an equitable K-12 education pathway that challenges a more inclusive implementation of readiness at the state level. I endeavored…

Few studies on teachers' social networks have extended their scopes from schools to online, leaving gaps and the potential to study how school and district colleagues as well as online-only peers can exert a network influence on teachers' online resource curation activities. These studies have underused the relational-event social-influence model…

Educator preparation programs (EPPs) have an opportunity to leverage and strengthen existing district partnerships to lead the way in co-designing teacher Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAPs), including the launch, operation, and continuous improvement of programs. At the very minimum, EPPs should be at the table as states, districts, and…

Our mixed-method study examined the mental health of Latinx children in migrant farmworker (LMFW) families, assessed whether acculturative stressors contributed to mental health problems, and examined whether family warmth and support counteracted the negative effects of acculturative stressors on mental health. Participants were children aged…

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is now more than twenty years beyond its inception when it was built on the concept that digital materials make learning content easy to reuse and share. This report discusses current legislative trends in OER and offers recommended OER practices for states.