The "Race to the Top" competitive grant program initiated a wave of teacher evaluation reform, which scholars and policymakers have long identified as critical to improving teacher quality and student performance. State boards of education (SBEs) and state education agencies (SEAs) took different approaches to these reforms, and as a…

Driven by new digital technologies, the future of learning is increasingly interactive, individualized, and full of real-world experiences and information. Unfortunately, the average school has about the same connectivity as the average American home, but serves 200 times as many users, and fewer than 20 percent of educators say their school's…

The measure of district wealth used by a state is a critical factor in reducing the potential extremes in available resources that may occur across districts. To be effective, the state definition of wealth should correlate closely with the local tax structure that is available to school districts to raise local revenues. Conversely, if wealth is…

Greater accountability in public higher education systems is a fact of life in the current political climate. Increasingly, one form this accountability takes is performance funding, which arises from elected officials' need for assurance that taxpayer funds are not only being invested and used properly but are resulting in desired outcomes at…

The goal of the Intensive Partnership (IP) initiative is to improve student success by transforming how teachers are recruited, developed, assigned, rewarded, and retained. RAND and American Institutes for Research (AIR) have been studying the seven IP sites (including three districts and four charter management organizations--CMOs) since the…

Almost 7 million young Americans (age 16-24) are insufficiently attached to school or work. Based on conservative estimates, we can generate over $1 billion just by helping a mere 0.1 percent earn a high school credential and complete their first year of college through Back on Track Designs. This brief lays out the cost of setting up these GED-…

In the era of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, school districts are under increasing pressure from policymakers to hold all students to high performance standards. In response, a growing number of schools are embracing the principles of student-centered learning (SCL). SCL is a contemporary approach that combines progressive and…

The nation's major city public school districts have substantial construction, renovation, modernization, and deferred maintenance needs because of the age and size of their school buildings, shifting populations, and the need to devote substantial resources to instructional personnel to meet their core academic mission. For instance, the average…

On March 25-26, 2010, a cadre of urban education leaders gathered in Baltimore, Maryland for the "Fair Student Funding Summit," a conference that brought together districts that use weighted student funding (WSF) as an approach for allocating dollars to schools. Convened by Education Resource Strategies (ERS) and hosted by Baltimore City…

Research suggests that institutional commitment to community engagement can be understood by examining levels of student, faculty, and community involvement in engagement; organizational structure, rewards, and campus publications supporting engagement; and compatibility of an institution's mission with this work (Holland, 1997). Underlying all of…

The "Personnel Development Program to Improve Services and Results for Children with Disabilities" is authorized under Section 662 of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and is known as the Personnel Development Program (PDP). The PDP is administered by the U.S. Department of Education's (ED's) Office of Special…

The United States faces a period of opportunity for reinvention unlike any other, and the need for dramatic reform extends to higher education. Today, the United States is at a crossroads, facing unprecedented challenges in meeting expectations and upholding values that have long distinguished the nation. For the benefit of every American,…

In May 2009, three senior financial leaders in higher education--Laurie G. Antolovic, Albert G. Horvath, and Margaret F. Plympton--participated in a panel session, moderated by Philip J. Goldstein, at the EDUCAUSE Enterprise Information and Technology Conference. The three also shared their thoughts in an audio interview conducted by Gerry Bayne,…

Purpose: To examine how local health care resources impact travel patterns of patients age 65 and older across the rural urban continuum. Methods: Information on inpatient hospital discharges was drawn from complete 2004 hospital discharge files from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) State Inpatient Databases (SID) for New York,…

The "Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 (Perkins IV)" reinforces a longstanding federal commitment to supporting career and technical education (CTE). Although federal contributions account for only a fraction of total state and local spending on CTE, federal policy has had, and continues to have, a large…