While COVID-19 caused unimaginable disruptions to public education, we saw remarkable examples of innovation and commitment to supporting high school student success. In our New England landscape of learning research, we learned that the boundaries of what it means to "reinvent" high school stretched, and in some systems, the momentum…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intersection of social class inequality and education policy through the lens of an analysis of the experiences and effects of state, local, and federal policy meant to engage communities around the use of federal funds to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students. The author intends to…

This paper presents an analysis of the extent to which poor pupils in England are clustered in schools with others like them. It is based on a segregation index of pupils eligible for free school meals for every year for which official national data is available. The trend over time has been published before up to 2019, and this paper extends the…

From extensive school closings and abrupt transitions to distance learning in spring 2020 to varied levels of face-to-face, hybrid, and virtual learning in school year (SY) 2020-2021, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has disrupted education across the world. While several studies have examined academic changes that have occurred over the past…

The United States and Pennsylvania economies remain deeply depressed compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. While the unemployment rate has come back down to around 7% (7.3% in Pennsylvania, 6.9% in the U.S.), Pennsylvania had 488,000 fewer jobs in October than February and the U.S., 10 million fewer. With COVID case rates higher than ever and…

This brief looks at how Pennsylvania distributed $174 million to Pennsylvania's public school districts in K-12 funding from the CARES Act that the federal government left up to states to allocate. The legislature and the Wolf administration agreed to distribute a fixed amount per district plus distribution of the remaining funds based on…

High school equivalency (HSE) is a recognised alternative to a high school diploma in the United States. It offers an opportunity to a range of disadvantaged adult learners such as school dropouts, refugees etc. to attain an educational certificate enabling them to move on in their life. This article presents an autoethnographic case study of a…

Fostering Opportunities is an innovative student engagement program for middle school and high school students who have experienced foster care. In 2018, Fostering Opportunities was selected through an open, competitive process by the Governor's Office of State Planning and Budgeting to receive implementation funds financed through a hybrid Pay…

States and districts allocate hundreds of billions of dollars annually to fund K-12 schools, and this allocation is largely driven by one calculation: how states count student enrollment. They do this in one of five ways: (1) A single count on a single day; (2) Two counts twice per year; (3) Multiple counts over a period of time; (4) An attendance…

This paper provides new evidence on educational inequality and reviews the literature on the causes and consequences of unequal education. We document large achievement gaps between children from different socio-economic backgrounds, show how patterns of educational inequality vary across countries, time, and generations, and establish a link…

The Department for Education (DfE) provided funding for secondary schools to establish short face-to-face summer schools over the 2021 summer holiday, to help them make up for learning lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lasting for one or two weeks, summer schools involved a blend of academic learning and enrichment activities and were intended to…

This report explains how Michigan could pursue a flexible funding program that would give learners greater agency, especially for middle-school and secondary students and their families. Charting a path to complete a diploma, every student would be allowed to use a portion of their per-pupil allotment to "purchase" courses from schools…

In November, amid a global pandemic and economic crisis, voters will choose the next president of the United States. Clearly, there will be no shortage of pressing issues to tackle within the first 100 days of the next administration. Addressing COVID-19 and the economy will certainly be top agenda items, but regardless of this election's outcome,…

In the city of Milwaukee, the vast majority of students do not achieve both high school and college graduation which has been termed as a "completion crisis." This is negatively impacting not only those students but also the region's workforce challenges. Indeed, the area economy could suffer greatly unless metro Milwaukee leaders can…

High school students nationwide spent the whole academic year fully online or in and out of a cobbled together hybrid format. While these students are digital naturals, they were asked to do even more online and lost opportunities to engage traditional in-person milestones like prom, graduation, and college visits. After a year of "Zooming it…