In 2019, the Louisiana Board of Regents issued its Master Plan for Higher Education establishing an audacious goal for the state--60% of working adults holding a degree or credential of value by the year 2030. At that time, Regents committed itself to "lead the way in developing and implementing key initiatives to eliminate performance gaps,…

With more than two decades of on-the-ground experience impacting 300,000 educators and 3 million students, NIET's success is grounded in research. The success of NIET's work is evident in the positive findings from evaluations of impact. In NIET's 2022-23 Research Summary, we summarize findings from five new studies and highlight selected findings…

Some still view arts education as a non-essential extracurricular activity despite its benefits. Even though the Every Student Succeeds Act acknowledges arts education is a healthy and well-rounded subject, local, district, and state administrators still control budget allocation and cuts, which generally affect arts education. There has also been…

Social, emotional, and academic development (SEAD) is a holistic approach to supporting students' development and learning that is integral to ensuring positive outcomes in school and beyond. Schools must ensure students experience healthy development and rigorous learning. Unfortunately, students of color, students from low-income backgrounds,…

The "2023-2024 Louisiana High School Planning Guidebook" consolidates the policies and programs that are most relevant to high school educators as they plan for the upcoming academic year and prepare every student for college and career success. Ensuring every high school student is on track for success is but one of the educational…

The "2021-2022 Louisiana High School Planning Guidebook" consolidates the policies and programs that are most relevant to high school educators as they plan for the upcoming academic year and prepare every student for college and career success. Ensuring every high school student is on track for success is but one of the educational…

Earning college credit in high school matters to students and parents. Students who earn college credits by taking a college-level course while in high school are more likely to enter college and succeed. Through these experiences, students become familiar with college expectations, academic behaviors, and habits of mind; get a head start on…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offers state leaders the opportunity to refocus their education systems on improving opportunity and outcomes for young people who have been underserved for far too long. The law includes a number of important requirements to focus on equity in school accountability, but it also leaves many key decisions up to…

Under new school-choice policies, schools feel increasing pressure to market their schools to parents and students. I examine how school leaders in New Orleans used different marketing strategies based on their positions in the market hierarchy and the ways in which they used formal and informal processes to recruit students. This study relied on…

In every state in the South, the percentage of residents with bachelor's degrees or higher who were born outside the state exceed the percentage born in-state, reflecting their dependence on imported talent over building their own talent-development systems. In Virginia, the Southern state with the highest percentage of residents with a B.A. or…

As the city with the largest charter-school market share in the United States, New Orleans, Louisiana exemplifies market-oriented models in education. For a city that is so "drenched in the past," the reform movement in New Orleans typically neglects historical context, often dismissing the education system pre-Katrina as simply corrupt…

This paper explores what happens to similar groups of children educated in different school districts. In this case, the "twins" in the study are groups of students who live in the same state in similar geographies and who share certain demographic characteristics. For this report, "twin districts" have very similar sizes and…

What happened to the New Orleans public schools following the tragic levee breeches after Hurricane Katrina is truly unprecedented. Within the span of one year, all public-school employees were fired, the teacher contract expired and was not replaced, and most attendance zones were eliminated. The state took control of almost all public schools…

This report provides a new resource for understanding the state of urban public schools in the U.S. Geared specifically toward city leaders who want to evaluate how well traditional district and charter schools are serving all their city's children and how their schools compare to those in other cities, the report measures outcomes for all public…

A full year of progress in advancing education reform across America is documented in each of the Foundation for Excellence in Education's Annual Reports. The illustrated pages of the 2014 report, provide data-rich updates on Excellence in Education's work to advance student-centered policies in more than 40 states, all aimed at improving learning…