Indigenous students in the United States experience disproportionate outcomes in school, including high rates of special education identification, suspension, and chronic absenteeism. Despite the systemic inequities that affect Native students, state educational agencies (SEAs) employ few staff who specialize in the education needs of these…

Rural schools face unique and complex challenges and opportunities specific to rural contexts. Recognizing this, the Region 15 Comprehensive Center (R15CC) created and facilitates a community of practice (COP), the Rural COP, focused specifically on rural education in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. The goals of this COP are to share…

Individuals need the shortest path to opportunity and employers require the shortest path to a skilled diverse workforce. To solve for this, Western Governors University (WGU) has created a skills-based architecture to map our competencies and credentials to high-demand knowledge, and technical skills as well as powerful, enduring, employability…

Despite the myriad of challenges that families, students, teachers and policymakers faced in 2021, the momentum to transform education did not waver. New opportunities for students unfolded in more than a dozen states through expanded private and public school choice. An additional 1.7 million students gained eligibility for private choice alone,…

Utah 4-H and Fidelity Investments collaborated on a program for increasing the financial literacy of teens and children. The collaboration resulted in positive impacts for both Extension and Utah youths. Extension benefited through partnership with a corporation that provided content expertise, volunteers, and funding for a financial literacy…

To innovate for the future and improve equity, while also protecting foundational and proven principles that support high-quality education, ExcelinEd is committing to 5 goals over 5 years to impact 5 million students. Those goals hold the key to impactful and far-reaching changes in education, with the power to transform schools, students' lives,…

Community colleges and universities have traditionally functioned independently, serving their respective markets and offering different programs and credentials. Growing populations and workforce needs have inspired institutions of higher education to challenge their traditional roles to provide added pathways and opportunities for students. One…

Focused on educational quality, innovation and opportunity--both within and outside of the traditional system--ExcelinEd advances a broad range of student-centered policy solutions that are successfully: (1) increasing student learning; (2) Readying graduates for college and career; and (3) Advancing equity. This year's annual report highlights…

Industries in every state are struggling to find qualified applicants for jobs, while job seekers too often find they lack the skills needed to enter or move along a career pathway to a good job. Preparing a workforce that is poised to meet the needs of businesses and ultimately to make the state more economically competitive is a top priority for…

The education system of the United States is not adequately preparing a large proportion of its students for college, career-training, and, ultimately, jobs that provide enough income to support a middle class standard of living. Because the education system has failed to attain hoped-for outcomes, some states are investigating new systems,…

Providing access to robust connectivity is critical to ensuring today's students are college and career ready. As such, federal, state, and district-level leaders have dedicated a significant amount of time, effort, and resources toward improving our schools' external broadband access, including both Internet access and wide area network (WAN).…

Teachers are increasingly recognized as the most important in-school factor in student achievement, yet the quality of the country's K-12 teaching force is not up to snuff. Much of the blame has been placed on education schools, which have come under fire for failing to produce enough high-performing teachers. Both initial certification programs,…

This report presents data on job opportunities and skill requirements through 2018 arranged by the 16 career clusters in the Carl D. Perkins Act of 2006. The data are arranged state-by-state and the District of Columbia, from 2008 through 2018. Skill requirements are reflected in the length and extent of educational preparation and training…

While the charter movement has a rich history in Utah, virtual charters are a recent development. In 2007, a founding board consisting of faculty, staff, and graduate students in Utah State University's Center for Open and Sustainable Learning prepared and submitted an application to create the state's second virtual charter, called the Open High…

The Gifted Kids Network is a Web-based, supplemental, gifted and talented programming model that includes standards-based classes, enrichment clusters, and affective programming. Students are encouraged to think critically and creatively and to question the material that is presented to them in order to meaningfully integrate topics covered into…