The American Montessori Society (AMS) celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020. From its beginnings under the leadership of inspirational founder Dr. Nancy McCormick Rambusch through to the present day, AMS has built a rich history. The AMS Records are open and accessible to all, and provide a unique opportunity to understand the full impact and…

Independent Demonstration Projects is a strategy to innovate for government without prior approval of officials. The innovator implements their idea as a minimum viable product, independent of the government. Once the innovation is operating, it creates pressure on officials to sustain and expand it with government resources. This case illustrates…

The Systematic Review Toolbox aims provide a web-based catalogue of tools that support various tasks within the systematic review and wider evidence synthesis process. Identifying publications surrounding specific systematic review tools is currently challenging, leading to a high screening burden for few eligible records. We aimed to develop a…

Atrium Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), an architectural company with over 3,000 partners, addresses the business need to collect and organize signed tax forms to assist its international partners. This case discusses the challenges associated with the current manual process, the pursuit of a solution to automate and simplify this process and…

Everyone knows what a school is, but the question of what constitutes an individual school is more complex than one would expect. Since not all individual records that appear in state or federal data files are schools, this creates a persistent challenge for educational researchers. In order to ensure that we have an accurate accounting of charter…

This Study Snapshot highlights key findings from a study on the effect of school report card design on usability, understanding, and satisfaction. The Every Student Succeeds Act requires state education agencies to produce school report cards that present information about school characteristics and performance in a user-friendly way. The District…

Assessment can be challenging for professionals in the early childhood setting, given the variety of ways that young children show what they know. Early childhood professionals who work with children with exceptionalities take into consideration individual needs when planning for assessments. Authentic assessment provides a more complete picture…

This article aims to share three assessment for learning tools and strategies PE teachers can use when teaching games: (1) hit map for net-barrier games; (2) heat map for territorial/invasion games; and (3) statistical count tool for games. This article also shares some considerations to note when implementing peer-assessment tools.

"Transition of care" is defined as the movement of an individual from one setting of care to another and involves communicating with appropriate out-of-camp stakeholders such as parents, teachers, and community health care providers to identify youth needs (before camp) and outcomes achieved (after camp) so desired health goals may be…

In 2022, the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Project SPARC conducted research to better understand the barriers experienced by parenting students participating in CalWORKs, California's cash assistance program for families with children. This brief highlights findings from the research about parenting students' experiences navigating…

About 19 million people submit a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) each year, making it one of the most commonly experienced federal administrative processes. The widespread reliance on the complicated form and underlying calculation of financial need have spurred efforts to simplify and improve the application process and…

Although anathema to domain experts, it is unfortunately the case that students of history can graduate with an honors degree without ever handling or analyzing archival materials. Archives are unique resources--ranging from official state documents to personal papers--that have the potential to enrich historical research immeasurably. Access to…

This design case documents the development of a new online training program to teach circuit court interns in Wise County, Virginia, how to create smart land records, or land record abstracts stored on a blockchain. The authors first describe the instructional context behind land record abstraction and the clients' original specifications for the…

Uprisings against police violence have placed the institution of policing front and center in conversations about societal change. In our work with activists, we have engaged in collecting and analyzing public records data to inform community organizing for change. In this editorial we discuss how to obtain, interpret, and analyze public records…

This article describes public records request assignments in courses in political science and in Asian American Studies. Beyond commonly known activities like voting, volunteering, signing petitions or peacefully protesting, students should gain experience in exercising their rights to an expansive set of government records that fall within the…