For the first time, the nation's most important federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), prominently features early childhood education. State and local leaders now have ample flexibility and opportunity to focus on early education as a foundational element of ESSA while advancing their state's vision and goals for early…

Creating smart, coherent education policy is painstaking work; there are technical, budgetary, and political challenges at almost every turn. But it is some of the most important work that state leaders can undertake. As Ohioans prepared to elect a new governor in late 2018, we at the Fordham Institute began rolling out a set of policy proposals…

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says he is eager to use a proposed $15 billion federal incentive-grant fund in part to reward states, districts, and even nonprofit organizations that have set high standards for the students they serve. Duncan's comments came in an interview in which he named as priorities reauthorization of the federal No…

Each year, Austin Independent School District Department of Research and Evaluation (DRE) staff develop a plan of work to describe the scope of work for the coming year. The plans that make up this document identify programs to be evaluated and services to be provided by DRE staff and provide the blueprints for evaluation that staff will follow…