To better understand the challenges and opportunities facing community colleges that want to expand apprenticeship opportunities to their students, New America conducted a year-long study. We created an advisory committee to guide this work and spoke to apprenticeship, workforce development, and community college leaders about the community…

Based on case studies in three states (CO, RI, and TX), this brief examines promising strategies to address the developmental and mental health needs of infants and toddlers involved in Child Welfare (CW). Due to family adversities, trauma, maltreatment, and separation from primary caregivers, these infants and toddlers are at substantial risk of…

Teachers' unions and community organizing emerged out of shared collective struggles for social justice in the United States in the twentieth century. Beyond broad general aspirations for a better society, however, their interests and tactics have not always been compatible. This interpretive essay revisits three recent case studies of interaction…

Ethical practice in engineering is critical for ensuring public trust in the field and in its practitioners, especially as engineers increasingly tackle international and socially complex problems that combine technical and ethical challenges. This report aims to raise awareness of the variety of exceptional programs and strategies for improving…

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…

This study aims to inform the California Department of Education (CDE) in ensuring the standards contained in Title 5 appropriately promote the planning and design of healthy, safe and educationally suitable K-12 school facilities. The study gathers and analyzes K-12 facility standards in ten case study states across the country to understand…

The purpose of this study was to inform the California Department of Education (CDE) in ensuring the standards contained in Title 5 appropriately promote the planning and design of healthy, safe and educationally suitable K-12 school facilities. The study gathers and analyzes K-12 facility standards in other states across the country to understand…

Most institutions are collecting evidence of student learning, but it is not clear how these results are being used to improve student outcomes. To learn more about what colleges and universities are doing to use assessment data productively to inform and strengthen undergraduate education, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment…

This paper presents a study about using scientific simulations to enhance the process of mathematical modelling. The main component of the study is a lesson whose major objective is to have students mathematise a trajectory of a projected object and then apply the model to formulate other trajectories by using the properties of function…

Policymakers know that improving teaching in our schools requires a systemic look at many policies related to educator effectiveness. For example, teacher preparation programs need to be dramatically improved and strengthened, but without accompanying reform in compensation, even highly effective and innovative schools of education are unlikely to…

In this study, we identified 10 sexuality education programmes from different locations in the USA that aim to give young people knowledge and skills to develop healthy relationships, as well as avoid pregnancy and disease. We conducted in-depth interviews with programme administrators to develop a series of case studies and provide concrete…

Many reports on rural education give little attention to digital learning. At most, they tend to note either infrastructure needs or the potential of remote course access, with little focus on instruction, outcomes, or exemplars. This report intends to begin correcting that imbalance by connecting the dots between rural regions, rural education,…

Early college schools are succeeding at our nation's most daunting educational challenge--propelling students from underserved backgrounds to graduate high school and earn postsecondary degrees. These schools combine high school and college in rigorous, yet supportive environments that embrace acceleration over remediation. Their "college for…

Merit pay programs for educators -- sometimes referred to a "pay for performance" -- attempt to tie a teacher's compensation to his/her performance in the classroom. While the idea of merit pay for classroom teachers has been around for several decades, only now is it starting to be implemented in a growing number of districts around the…

This report provides six mini-case studies of higher education policy reforms enacted in other states, exploring the important role that state policy leadership played in developing, promoting, and implementing these policies aimed at improving higher education outcomes, and discussing the relevance of each reform effort for California. This…