Federal law defines English learner (EL) eligibility differently for Indigenous, compared to non-Indigenous, students, allowing for broader entry into the EL category, along with its accompanying resources and services. We interviewed EL leaders from 25 state departments of education to learn about their level of understanding of the…

When the COVID-19 pandemic drove schools online in March 2020, state education leaders were left without access to data needed to understand how best to support students. The pandemic revealed the strengths and limitations of state education data systems while inspiring new strategies for collecting, reporting and using data. In 2021, DataSmith…

This publication highlights how state leaders tackle data interoperability with the emergence of data standards for student information, assessment, digital content, and other educational applications. While states are at various maturity levels for interoperability, each state shares goals for interoperability, the drivers for those goals,…

The report contains real-world, proven school climate strategies to guide policymakers in building a comprehensive and coherent state-wide approach for improving school climate. It features 12 recommendations linked to existing state policy examples policymakers can use to build a comprehensive, coherent state-wide approach for improving school…

Amid the cacophony of special interests fighting to be heard in statehouses and on Capitol Hill, a cadre of current and former chief state school officers is elbowing its way into the nation's education debate at a time when states are taking more control of K-12 education. A little more than a year old, Chiefs for Change is an invitation-only…

Across the United States many chemistry departments are engaged in developing assessment plans. New guidelines from the American Chemical Society (ACS) Committee on Professional Training request a department's latest self-assessment and a plan for acting on the recommendations. This manuscript describes assessment practices at institutions ranging…

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is working to respond to increased interest in the use of growth models for school accountability. Growth models are based on tracking change in individual student achievement scores over multiple years. While growth models have been used for decades in academic research and program evaluation, a…

Locally controlled public schools are one of the cornerstones of our nation's democracy, yet many schools are not preparing students for success. Far too many students are not graduating, and many of those who do graduate are woefully unprepared for college or a meaningful career. Successfully initiating and sustaining meaningful improvements in…

Site visits were conducted at six state departments of vocational education (Texas, Illinois, Utah, South Carolina, Michigan, and Indiana) to assess the level of articulation with related educational dissemination agencies. These states represented a variety of settings which illustrated the effects of geography, population size, levels of past…

Materials collected in this book and in Volume I (SP 003 238) are related to the Multi-State Teacher Education Project (M-STEP). They deal with program experiments and resulting directions, including guide-line type materials resulting from the project effort and items prepared by other sources as project-centered aids. Part I, "A Forward…

Materials collected in this book and in Volume II (SP 003 239) are outgrowths of the Multi-State Teacher Education Project (M-STEP), a 3-year program to strengthen the capacity of state departments of education in the development of joint responsibility between local education agencies and teacher education institutions with emphasis on laboratory…