School districts across the country are receiving billions of dollars in federal relief aid. The unprecedented size of this investment -- three separate aid packages providing nearly $200 billion for K-12 education alone -- presents both an enormous opportunity and a challenge for state and local education leaders. The principle question is, how…

In statehouses, school boards, and communities across the US, battles are raging over the direction of education policy--from the standards that are shaping what students learn to how test results are being used to judge a teacher's performance. These battles are being waged against a backdrop of shifting demographics, rapidly developing…

Community colleges are beginning to build on guided pathways reforms in partnership with employers, universities, and K-12 schools to create cross-sector pathways to college and career opportunities for students--particularly those students traditionally underserved by higher education. The aim is to improve economic mobility for community…

New York City schools have improved dramatically during the last two decades, including steep declines in dropout rates, increases in high school graduation and college enrollment, and improved attendance and achievement. Yet, despite the overall progress, deep inequities continue to plague the City's education system. At every level of schooling,…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has gathered highlights from a variety of data sources to provide a composite, high-level view of the complex American education landscape since the onset of the pandemic. In this first installment of the pandemic data hub, NCES provides findings related to: (1) changes in in-person instruction…

Has the gap in average standardized test scores between students from high- and low-income families widened, narrowed, or remained stable over the last 3 decades? The question is important both because the achievement gap is measure of how (un)equally educational opportunities are distributed in the US, and because the disparity in educational…

What does it take to transform a large, bureaucratic institution with a fractured culture and a compliance orientation into a nurturing, collaborative, vision-directed organization? In 2017, the California Department of Education's Expanded Learning Division (after-school and summer programs) took a radically different approach by cultivating the…

The "National Physical Activity Plan", as well as professional and government agencies (NASPE, 2008a; US Department of Health and Human Services, 2000) acknowledge pre-kindergarten (pre-K) children should be part of comprehensive school physical activity initiatives anchored in quality physical education programming. These…

The purpose of the U.S. Department of Education's online newsletter "The Education Innovator" is to promote innovative practices in education; to offer features on promising programs and practices; to provide information on innovative research, schools, policies, and trends; and to keep readers informed of key Department priorities and…

After-school learning, summer learning, and family involvement in learning are major predictors of children's development, educational achievement, and school success. The United States will not achieve its national goals of equal educational opportunity without addressing the importance of and inequities in out-of-school learning opportunities.…

At its core the political push for full inclusion models of special education delivery derives from the belief that inclusion provides equal access, equitable distribution of resources and increased social opportunity to children. This study focused upon the evolution of special education programming within a pre-K to sixth grade elementary school…

Richard Murnane observes that the American ideal of equality of educational opportunity has for years been more the rhetoric than the reality of the nation's political life. Children living in poverty, he notes, tend to be concentrated in low-performing schools staffed by ill-equipped teachers. They are likely to leave school without the skills…