Multidisciplinary teams of school- and community-employed mental health, health, and educational staff work together in schools to offer a full continuum of mental health promotion, prevention, early intervention, and treatment services and supports. Intentional teaming structures and practices are essential to ensure teams deliver effective,…

In December 2023, TICAS published new research on the College Affordability Gap--the gap between students' total cost of attendance and non-loan aid available to them--in California, Michigan, and New York, with a focus on students eligible for Pell Grants. Our new report builds on this research with data from nine additional states (Colorado,…

For the first time in U.S. history, a proposal for nationwide free community college passed through the House of Representatives in the fall of 2021. Although the provision was ultimately dropped from President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill, its early presence suggests the political appeal of making college accessible to more Americans. These…

In partnership with the Barr Foundation, the Center on Reinventing Public Education conducted longitudinal interviews with ten teachers and seven parents across four school systems in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, and Massachusetts between January and June of 2021. Our interviews expose how ill-equipped New England schools were to address…

An innovative system-building initiative known as the STEM Learning Ecosystems Community of Practice (SLECoP) is transforming U.S. STEM education through cross-sector partnerships between schools, afterschool and summer programs, libraries, museums, and businesses, among others. Although logic models exist to describe how SLEs can make positive…

Public higher education produces many benefits that are vital to the New England economy, but it is increasingly at risk following years of state budget cuts. In 2017 in New England, real per-student state funding for higher education was lower than it was in 2008, with a double-digit decline in each of the region's states except Maine. States…

This paper asks the question: Is now the right time to consider a statewide policy initiative to support increased access for Massachusetts community college students to paid internships that can help them improve their employment and earnings trajectory? Is this something that employers, colleges, and state leaders would see as a welcome…

Living-learning communities combine curricular, co-curricular, and residential components of college life. They are a relatively new variation on the residential education that has been part of the undergraduate experience at America's independent colleges and universities for centuries. Research suggests that living-learning communities have a…

Making Connections was the Annie E. Casey Foundation's signature place-based, community-change initiative of the 2000s. It sought to build on previous work and launch an effort focused firmly on the framework of family strengthening. The Foundation started Making Connections in 22 places, focusing eventually on first 10, then seven sites. It…

Across New England, an increasing share of jobs will require some postsecondary education by 2020. Yet, the National Student Clearinghouse findings demonstrate that student pathways to a degree or credential are not always straightforward. In New England, approximately 25% of all students who earned a bachelor's degree had previously attended a…

Summer learning experiences for school-age children can be provided in a variety of ways and settings, including summer school programs (often remedial), community-based programs (often a continuation of afterschool programs), and home-based programs (in which families are provided with information and resources to encourage reading, often run by…

REL Pacific at McREL, one of 10 Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), serves educators in American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia (Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap), Guam, Hawai'i, the Republic of the…

Why is "remedial" or "developmental" education such a hot issue? Partly because it costs time and money and casts doubt on the elementary and secondary education systems that we assume will prepare students for college. The New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) explored solutions to the problem at a recent forum in…

This technical brief describes updates to a database of dropout prevention programs and policies in 2006/07 created by the Regional Education Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands and described in the Issues & Answers report, "Piloting a searchable database of dropout prevention programs in nine low-income urban school districts in the…

Games and other forms of play are used in today's libraries to attract underserved patrons, to introduce patrons to other library resources and services, and to facilitate engagement between library patrons. While many perceive gaming as a new library service, gaming services have been part of librarianship since the nineteenth century through…