This Special Report outlines state-level policy components that help ensure work-based learning opportunities for high school students are well-coordinated, broadly accessible, aligned to state or regional workforce demands, and of high quality.

A growing number of states are interested in tracking the readiness of children entering kindergarten. In 2010, just seven states (Alaska, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, and Vermont) collected Kindergarten Entry Assessment (KEA) data for the purposes of aggregating data at the state level. Since this time, most states report…

Principals are essential to improving student achievement and narrowing persistent achievement gaps between students in underserved communities and their economically advantaged peers. The Every Student Succeeds Act provides opportunities for states to invest in developing and supporting effective school leaders. One such opportunity includes…

With their "open door" admissions policies and lower tuition, community colleges offer a gateway to higher education for millions of American students. Indeed, students who enter higher education through community colleges are much more likely than those who start at four-year institutions to be low-income or the first in their family to…

America spends $115,000 per-pupil on education, one of the highest in the world. Even with high funding being provided for the educational budget, standardized state assessment scores are not reflecting the aim for higher quality of education that NCLB is trying to accomplish. Teachers use an assortment of assessments to gauge student's mastery…

This topic paper details how dual and concurrent enrollment programs can help states overcome workforce readiness and postsecondary access and completion challenges and how governors can strengthen these programs by using their bully pulpit, agenda setting authority and budgetary authority to do so. It concludes with a number of examples of how…

Publicly funded pre-K is often touted as a means to narrow achievement gaps, but this goal is less likely to be achieved if poor and/or minority children do not, at a minimum, attend equal quality pre-K as their non-poor, non-minority peers. In this paper, I find large "quality gaps" in public pre-K between poor, minority students and…

This study investigates the relationship between internal teacher profiles and pre-K teacher-child interaction quality in the pre-K classroom. Two questions were addressed: (1) What internal profiles exist for pre-kindergarten (pre-K) teachers? and (2) Do internal profiles relate to observed structural and process quality in the pre-K classroom?…

Good mentoring of graduate students influences their perseverance and success to completion, whereas bad mentoring can result in negative outcomes, including delayed degree completion or non-completion. What the authors refer to as the gray zone is that which falls between good and bad mentoring. Examples are partial mentoring or changes in…

The Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) program, authorized by Congress in 2011, is designed to improve the quality of early learning and development programs for children from birth through age 5. This discretionary grant program is administered jointly by the U.S. Departments of Education (ED) and Health and Human Services…

The effects of high- versus low-quality child care during 2 developmental periods (infant-toddlerhood and preschool) were examined using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care. Propensity score matching was used to account for differences in families who used different combinations of child…

Research Findings: As policymakers expand access to preschool, the sociodemographic composition of preschool classrooms will become increasingly important. These efforts may create programs that increase the concentration of children from low-income families or, alternatively, foster the creation of socioeconomically diverse preschool classrooms.…

The Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes (CEELO) reviewed data on 21 states' principal licensure requirements, conducted structured interviews with experts on principal preparation and professional development in 7 states, and spoke with staff at the National Association of Elementary School Principals and the National Institute for School…

Improving teacher preparation is critical to long-term improvement in teacher quality. More than 200,000 new teachers enter classrooms each year. Increasing student enrollment, the retirement of baby boom generation teachers, and high attrition in their first five years (between 40 and 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession) have…

Making robust and reliable information about schools accessible is one of the most powerful ways to foster engagement and promote informed decisions that will shape our communities. Though education data is frequently collected and aggregated at the state level, data is rarely synthesized across cities. This report provides comparable information…