The Massachusetts 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Grade 4 reading results showed that nearly one quarter of students scored below basic. Only 45% of students scored proficient or higher on the reading assessment. Moreover, the 2019 scores represent a decline in the percentages of students reading at basic, proficient, or…

The COVID-19 crisis caused the educational system's sudden and drastic upheaval as parents were forced to decide where their children would attend school and how they would get there. These decisions were complicated by the uncertainty surrounding what type of online or hybrid schooling districts would offer, the health risks of different…

Lately I have been thinking and writing about the idea of a teacher's oeuvre -- the notion that over time teachers create a significant body or work that might be compared to that of an artist or composer. I have argued that too often the contributions that teachers make remain invisible, under-valued and unknown in the field of education. This is…

Few elementary students in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) are scoring at grade level or higher on the ACT Aspire reading assessment. This study examined data on students who enrolled in grade 3 in a CNMI public school from 2014/15 to 2018/19 to understand their grade 3 reading performance. The study used administrative…

Youth and young adults in foster care yearn for and deserve lifelong families and supportive environments where they are nurtured and encouraged as they grow into adulthood. Ideally, this happens by ensuring that children and youth can remain safely with their families. Unfortunately, for many children and youth who must enter foster care, this…

In this exploratory study, we describe the learning experiences of adolescents from a social project called "Orquestrando Talentos," which offered violin and viola lessons in two high-needs schools for low-income students in Erechim, Southern Brazil. Grounded on the central tenets of popular education, on Paulo Freire's work, and on…

Ten years ago, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) shifted K-12 funding in California, directing more dollars to districts with high-need students--English Learner, low-income, and/or foster youth. This policy brief examines concerns over the flexibility LCFF gave districts to spend their money and provides data regarding: (1) how additional…

An examination of the employment market in Tanzania highlights profound differences in the competencies and skills of individuals who have graduated from the local schools from those who have graduated from international schools. Although Tanzania had achieved nearly universal access to primary education by 2007, enrollment of primary school-age…

Intercultural Competence for Youth workers (ICY) was a project co-funded by the European Union Erasmus+ programme that ran for 14 months, from spring 2019 to spring 2020, and involved four organisations from Finland, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Engaging youth workers and young people with fewer opportunities, the project helped youth…

Online education was the exception rather than the norm of the English school system prior to March 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in two periods of government-directed school closure from March to July 2020 and again from January to March 2021. These closures necessitated a transformation to online education almost overnight. Although much…

This article explores issues that had to be confronted over a three-year period in terms of two New York State funded grants for which I was the evaluator. Major, critical challenges are presented, described, and discussed. Specifically, the paper addresses issues related to lack of planning at the grant design stage that resulted in challenges…

This article describes how, in our research with Head Start teachers in American Samoa, we combined video-cued multivocal ethnographic method (VCE) with traditional ethnographic approaches to understand our interlocutors' perspectives on curriculum and pedagogy, and the contrast between them and mainland US teachers using the same federally…

While overall primary school enrollment is high in Benin, there are stark differences between regions. In rural areas, children of poor families often have to help with agricultural activities (e.g. working in fields or with cattle) instead of going to school. The Global Partnership for Education is working with Benin to address one of the…

Future teachers agree to meet a pupil once a week to engage in cultural, social and educational activities within the framework of two mentoring projects conducted at the University of Kassel. The students are supported at the University by an educational science seminar and by professional supervision (Garlichs et al., 2000; Heinzel et al.,…

We develop a new framework for identifying at-risk students in public schools. Our framework has two fundamental advantages over "status quo" systems: (1) it is based on a clear definition of what it means for a student to be at risk and (2) it leverages states' rich administrative data systems to produce more informative risk measures.…