Most states in the United States operate their public preschool programs in a mixed delivery system that serves children in local education agencies (LEAs) as well as non-LEA settings, such as Head Start agencies, child care centers, private schools, and family child care homes. To inform state preschool administrators and policymakers as they…

There is ample opportunity for state boards to improve outcomes for children by strengthening the early care and education workforce and thereby improving the quality of early care and education. Ensuring that ECE professionals have the knowledge, supports, and resources they need to support children's learning is one avenue to improving the…

Documenting and improving early childhood program quality is a national priority, leading to a rapid expansion of Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRISs). QRISs document and improve the quality of early childhood education programs and provide clear information to families about their child care choices. The current study described how…

This topic paper details how dual and concurrent enrollment programs can help states overcome workforce readiness and postsecondary access and completion challenges and how governors can strengthen these programs by using their bully pulpit, agenda setting authority and budgetary authority to do so. It concludes with a number of examples of how…

In 2012 Michigan implemented Great Start to Quality, a voluntary quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) that uses a multidimensional assessment system to rate the quality of early childhood education programs. Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest examined how changes to Great Start to Quality's rating calculation approach that were…

In the quest to raise student achievement in low-performing urban schools, researchers often point to the central importance of recruitment and retention of a high quality teacher workforce (Lankford, Loeb and Wyckoff 2002; Rivkin, Hanushek and Kain 2005; Jacob 2007). At the same time, advocates have proposed charter schools not only as a means to…

Six years after passage of No Child Left Behind and midway to the nation's goal of having students on grade level or better in reading and math by 2014, more data than ever before has been collected about the academic performance of American students and schools. Information in this brochure charts student demographics, achievement-to-date and…

This document proposes a direction and strategies for using a total quality management approach to develop and implement standards for evaluating vocational education students and assessing programs throughout Michigan. Discussed in part 1 are the following: the terms "standards,""assessments," and "certification";…

IN THIS ARTICLE THE CHAIRMAN OF AN INNER-CITY ASSOCIATION OF PARENTS CRITICIZES THE DETROIT BOARD OF EDUCATION FOR FAILING TO EDUCATE INNER-CITY STUDENTS. HE MAINTAINS THAT COMPARISONS OF COUNTYWIDE SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT DATA AND THE RESULTS OF EXAMINATIONS FOR MILITARY SERVICE SHOW THAT INNER-CITY SCHOOLS DO NOT ADEQUATELY PREPARE STUDENTS FOR…