"Core to College: Preparing Students for College Readiness and Success" is a three-year initiative. The initiative's mission is to "facilitate greater coordination between K-12 and postsecondary education systems around implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and aligned assessments." Its aim is to foster…

The Core to College initiative aims to facilitate greater coordination between K-12 and postsecondary education systems around implementation of the Common Core State Standards and aligned assessments. Core to College grants have been awarded to teams in Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon,…

Background: Inclusive STEM (traditionally known to stand for "Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math") high schools are emerging across the country as a mechanism for improving STEM education and getting more and diverse students into STEM majors and careers. However, there is no consensus on what these schools are or should be,…

Implementing new college and career readiness standards, along with readying teachers and students for new assessments, is a monumental undertaking by multiple national, state, and local education leaders and organizations. One critical policy area for states to consider is supports for educator preparation programs to ensure that new teachers…

This report identifies the states with current or pending state-level end-of-course assessment (EOC) programs, the subjects in which EOCs are administered in the states, and the EOCs (if any) students must pass to graduate from high school. Twenty-two states currently administer one or more EOCs to all students in an EOC course. This number will…

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…

Governors are increasingly aware that the emerging economy will provide few well-paying jobs for workers who have not earned a postsecondary degree or a relevant workforce certificate. Fifty years ago, nearly 80 percent of all jobs required only a high school diploma or less and most paid a good wage. Fast-forward to data from 2013 and that number…

Achieving national goals for increased college completion in a time of scarce resources will require the postsecondary institutions that enroll the majority of undergraduates--community colleges and less-selective public universities--to graduate more students at a lower cost. Davis Jenkins and Olga Rodriguez examine research on how these…

This issue of "EFF Voice" focuses on current research and development efforts to create an assessment framework for the Equipped for the Future (EFF) Content Standards. As in all earlier phases of EFF R&D, this work engages practitioners in the field, as well as researchers and other technical advisors, as partners in the development…

This newsletter reports on the activities of Equipped for the Future (EFF), which is a National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) initiative that develops content standards to ensure that every adult can gain the knowledge and skills needed to fulfill real-world responsibilities as workers, parents, and citizens. A message from the NIFL…