This study seeks to share teachers' and principals' voices from middle schools in the Southeastern United States who are attempting to help their students achieve academic success. Obtaining a snapshot of middle schools in the Southeastern United States provides opportunities to recognize trends and identify challenges about the current…

In most states kindergarten entry assessments (KEA) are employed primarily to inform parents and teachers. KEAs can serve as a key indicator of child development at formal school entry to inform education, but also could serve as a baseline for assessing progress in the early grades. However, their usefulness for this purpose is limited because…

Ten years ago, MDC's report, "The State of the South 2007: Philanthropy as the South's 'Passing Gear,'" (ED519455) examined how philanthropy can accelerate progress toward a South that is both equitable for all its residents and competitive with other regions of the country. A decade later, our second iteration, commissioned by the…

This hearing serves as a first in a set of hearings focusing on early learning. In his opening statement, Senator Tom Harkin, Chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, strongly encouraged members of this committee on both sides of the aisle to hold roundtables and have discussions on early learning in their local…

The "Preschool Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale" (PreBERS) is a standardized, norm-referenced instrument that assesses emotional and behavioral strengths of preschool children. This study investigated whether the PreBERS four-factor structure (i.e., emotional regulation, school readiness, social confidence, and family involvement)…

This brief reviews results of an Annie E. Casey Foundation sponsored project that challenged local data intermediaries in eight cities (all partners in the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, NNIP) to use their data to promote strengthening of their local school readiness systems. The project showed it was possible to develop rich…

This study uses a widely respected method to calculate graduation rates, both nationally and for each state, for each public school graduating class from 1991 to 2002. It also combines graduation rate calculations with data provided by the U.S. Department of Education to calculate the percentage of all students who left high school eligible for…