In March 2020, emergency school closings as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic initiated a sudden widespread use of virtual learning and brought new challenges that affected teaching and learning across multiple contexts. The complex change caused school district leaders to make plans to reinvent and reimagine schools and created a need for teacher…

In the U.S., state guidance to schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was politicized. We used state-level political affiliation to explore whether access to curricular resources differed pre-pandemic or during pandemic remote teaching and teachers' reported control over curricular resources during pandemic teaching. We found that…

One year after the COVID-19 pandemic forced state and school leaders across the nation and around the world to immediately close school buildings, the lasting impact on students is increasingly evident: Months of online learning and limited in-person interaction with educators, coaches and mentors have led to gaps in learning, and unknown…

Faced with national shortages of school psychologists, it is important that graduate educators explore different service delivery options to educate the greatest number of potential candidates to meet this need. One of the greatest areas of practitioner shortages is in the rural and less populated regions of the country, where a university can be…

Online learning continues to grow at post-secondary institutions across the United States, but many question its efficacy, especially for students most at-risk for failure. This paper engages that issue. It examines recent research on the success of community college students who take online classes and explores similar comparisons using 656,258…

As cyberschooling options expand, it is vital that we understand the nuances of these particular learning opportunities. Because little research exists on leaders of K-12 cyberschools, this exploratory case study had two purposes. We first examined how 18 cyberschool leaders in the United States obtained their position. Second, we explored the…

Approximately 5 million secondary students take family and consumer sciences (FCS) classes in the United States each year (AAFCS, 2012). Most states reported a shortage of FCS teachers (Werhan & Way, 2006). Programs to prepare FCS teachers are essential to maintaining the pool of teachers, but they are becoming scarce. One potential source of…

Online learning has steadily become a more integral strategy for schools and districts in their efforts to offer students greater access to the courses they need. Where in the past, much of the online learning activity happened at the state level or regional level, more and more schools are exercising greater control over their online and digital…

The Afterschool Alliance and MetLife Foundation are proud to celebrate a fifth round of the MetLife Foundation Afterschool Innovator Awards. For the past five years, we have collaborated to highlight the work of quality afterschool programs that support children, families and communities across the nation. This compendium is a compilation of four…