Studies of charter closure rates typically focus on year-to-year closures. While important for researchers, such studies provide little guidance to families seeking to understand the risk of enrolling their child in a charter school. That is because studies determining how many schools close each year provide no information on how long the school…

On March 22, 2017, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that schools are obligated to provide more than de mimimus services for students with disabilities. The core issue in "Endrew F. v. Douglas County Schools" is how schools are to define the "A" in FAPE: What is an appropriate public education? Douglas County schools held…

Leadership matters. Principals are the primary drivers of school improvement and the best long-term investment to ensure effective teaching and learning at scale. Principals are central to State efforts to implement new college and career-ready standards, execute teacher evaluation and support systems and turn around low-performing schools. These…

Performance pay can be implemented in ways that are helpful to students and teachers, or it can repeat the mistakes of the past. To avoid these mistakes, initiatives must address the district factors that affect schools. There are six cornerstones for compensation reform: 1) Performance-based compensation is a systemic reform; 2) Compensation…

The "Closing the Achievement Gap" series explores the Casey Foundation's education investments and presents stories, results, and lessons learned. This publication provides an in-depth look at Foundation support of community schools, including selected results and lessons learned. It also includes stories about one California school…

Colorado's 178 district superintendents are embroiled in a polite, yet pointed debate with Commissioner of Education William J. Moloney and the state school board over the state's role in helping districts raise student achievement. In this article, the author discusses Colorado district superintendents' grievances. They are calling for more…

Now that all 50 states and the District of Columbia are building statewide longitudinal data systems, the next step is to ensure that the information in these systems is used to improve student learning. The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) has identified 10 actions that states can take to ensure that the right data are available and accessible and…

Consider Adequately Yearly Progress (AYP) a misnomer, or least an understatement; satisfying its mandates demands a far greater than adequate effort. Established in the No Child Left Behind Act, AYP requires that districts and schools show a minimum, prescribed level of growth in student achievement, until the year 2013-2014, when every eligible…

The authors provide examples of sports-based youth development programs and offer information about program mission and vision, program design and content, evaluation results, and program sustainability. The four sports-based youth development programs presented are Harlem RBI, Tenacity, Snowsports Outreach Society, and Hoops & Leaders…

This article discusses the Mapping CSAP (Colorado Student Achievement Program) project, an extension of a grant-funded programme that sought to show the importance of a geographic perspective on public policy decision-making at the state level. In this programme, high school students were asked to grapple with current state issues in Colorado,…

This study examined differences in nine factors between a group of the highest-performing needs high schools (HPHN) and a group of the lowest performing high-needs (LPHN) high schools using teacher responses from a national dataset. The factors are: (1) shared mission and goals; (2) professional development; (3) collaboration among teachers (4)…