Recent data from statewide assessments, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and college remediation needs show that an increasing number of K-12 students are not performing at grade level. As schools look to support these students' learning, some districts are turning to a proven strategy for identifying the students…

Civics education continues to gain national importance, especially in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and with recent debates about the teaching of history that addresses the legacy of racism and discrimination in the United States. Despite the increasing interest in strengthening civics education, states continue to differ in…

More than a decade ago, the K-12 Framework for Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) shifted states' notions of what constitutes the core of science skills and knowledge that students need to thrive in school and beyond. The majority of states adopted standards based on the framework as well as the NGSS. Yet because of the…

Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) recognizes that there is a need to provide better and more targeted supports from students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) students across the Commonwealth. To inform these supports, districts are looking for a numeracy and literacy screener that can both…

High-quality K-12 instructional materials can meaningfully improve teaching practice and student achievement, especially when paired with professional learning support. Yet state policymakers have usually left ultimate authority for textbook selection to school district leaders. Consequently, the quality of materials across U.S. classrooms and…

An advisory group representing a broad range of education leaders and experts from across the Commonwealth participated in the Massachusetts Accountability System Review Advisory Committee between December 2023 and June 2024. This document describes the work of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to engage…

This is the fourth in a series of five briefs published by Office of Education Technology (OET) on the key considerations facing educational leaders as they work to build and sustain core digital infrastructure for learning. These briefs offer recommendations to complement the fundamental infrastructure considerations outlined in the 2017 OET…

JEM Learning is a new microschool community that provides families with a child-centered alternative to both traditional public and private schools. Microschools like JEM Learning are small, multi-age learning communities with paid educators that are reminiscent of the one-room schoolhouse model. They were gaining traction prior to 2020, but their…

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is now more than twenty years beyond its inception when it was built on the concept that digital materials make learning content easy to reuse and share. This report discusses current legislative trends in OER and offers recommended OER practices for states.

Historically, students have had little influence over the design of education institutions or opportunities (Benner et al., 2019; Lac & Cumings Mansfield, 2018). Decisions about school policies, programs, and structures are primarily steered by administrators, policymakers, and teachers. In recent years, however, educators and policy advocates…

A significant movement is underway across the nation to design K-12 assessment systems that better equip stakeholders to provide an equitable and excellent education to each child. While some of these innovations emerged before the pandemic, the massive disruption to instruction fueled a new urgency to rethink the potential of assessments to drive…

Many districts struggle to access the cybersecurity expertise or other resources needed to secure their networks and data appropriately. This isn't because mitigation strategies don't exist. Often, the barrage of suggestions and warnings directed at school IT leaders are too overwhelming to navigate, are not properly scoped for educational…

For well over a year, school shutdowns and sputtered reopenings have tested educators' resourcefulness and resolve. As the new school year begins, many are reflecting on small triumphs and lessons learned from that experience. One practice that proved central to many schools' resolve and resilience during this crisis was teachers' collaboration on…

This report captures state leaders' perspectives on various issues relating to education technology at this unique moment in time. To be more precise, the report provides an analysis of the feedback collected from state leaders through surveys administered in April and May 2023. It seeks to catalog the ways in which state education agencies are…

This rubric was developed for the analysis of intervention programs against the criteria of implementing the four recommendations and accompanying action steps presented in the IES Practice Guide "Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4-9" for the Adolescent Literacy Intervention Selection Tool (A-LIST). Each item in…