The purpose of this guide is to illuminate best practices for meaningful engagement of youth in Community Schools and to recognize youth voice as a community asset that can help advance more equitable school systems. Youth voice plays an important role in redesigning how public education functions. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education and…

The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) entitles students with disabilities to a free appropriate public education. Students with disabilities often require additional support to enable them to achieve academic and functional goals relative to their nondisabled peers. These legally protected supports and services all add up…

No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act have made accountability central to conversations about education policy. But neither statute articulates a clear vision of what constitutes "quality" or "equity" in education, nor do they include a mechanism to ensure that schools have sufficient resources to pursue that…

In a dedicated effort to build high-quality, equitable career pathways Advance CTE, in partnership with Education Strategy Group through JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s "New Skills ready network," released "Braiding Funding To Support Equitable Career Pathways." This policy brief is the fourth in a series designed to help build…

Social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies or standards derive from SEL frameworks. In this report, the terms "SEL competencies" and "standards" are used interchangeably to refer to statements about "what students should know and be able to do," recognizing that states may use different terms such as…

While the United States is simultaneously recovering from a global pandemic and facing a national reckoning of racial injustice, the effects of COVID-19 continue to exacerbate academic and opportunity gaps that were decades in the making in K-12 systems. Most students are performing worse than before the pandemic. For students of color, there is a…

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the longstanding pattern of lower scholastic performance among marginalized groups of students negatively impacted by poverty, disability, and race. The perception among educators and citizens continues to be that practices around equal rights equate to provisions related to equity. In Arkansas, the unknown…

This research study describes a quantitative examination of Arkansas school counselors' perceptions of their knowledge about the McKinney-Vento homeless Assistance Act and how involved they are with partnership practices in meeting the needs of homeless children and families. The study also examined what type of training school counselors have…

This study examined educators' attitudes, values, and beliefs about families and the development of family-school partnerships in demographically changing school and community contexts. Survey data were collected from 188 educators in nine school districts. In-depth interviews were conducted with four teachers, four leaders, and one parent…

For any labor market to function properly, clear information is needed to guide decision making; its absence invariably leads to less than optimal decisions and inefficiencies. While the broader labor market is riddled with imperfect information, the teacher labor market is particularly vulnerable--largely for the lack of the most basic…

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Education announced the "Raise the Bar: Lead the World" initiative to use decades of research and professional experience to transform public education and advance education equity. There are three focus areas: (1) Achieve Academic Excellence; (2) Boldly Improve Learning Conditions; and (3) Create Pathways…

Historically, state departments of education, or SEAs, have--for the most part--been compliance-focused organizations that managed federal education policy. Over the past several decades, these agencies have been education policy implementation entities. Today, while their compliance responsibilities have remained, they are taking on more…

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…

The Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) provided states with newfound flexibility on accountability measures and school improvement strategies. Many policy experts have analyzed states' ESSA plans, which explain how states use their federal funds under various provisions of the new law, as well as the approaches states take to identify and rate…

The growing numbers of English language learners across the country provide an opportunity for state policymakers and education leaders to invest in and reap the benefits of a well-educated, culturally competent workforce. In this article, the authors review state-level ELL funding for the ten states experiencing the highest ELL population growth…