Existing analytic frameworks used to analyze and report on English learner (EL) students have important limitations that complicate the efforts of policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to fully understand this group's experiences and outcomes and respond accordingly. To address this issue, we argue that education agencies should report and…

Nearly 2.3 million adults are incarcerated in our nation's prisons and jails. Incarcerated adults are, on average, less educated than the general population. Their lack of job skills and a steady employment history, combined with the stigma of their felony convictions, creates significant barriers to reentering the labor market when they are…

A quality education that promotes learning among all students is a prerequisite for an economy that increases opportunity, prosperity, and growth. School accountability policies, in which school performance is evaluated based on identified metrics, have developed over the past few decades as a strategy central to assessing and achieving progress…

Many low-performing schools across the nation have increased learning time in response to federal requirements for the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program. The conditions governing federal waivers of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) also require certain schools to redesign the school day, week, or year to include additional…

Describes development of the Oregon Quality Education model, an adequacy-funding model. Explores the rationale behind its development as well as the political and economic realities policymakers face in attempting to determine how much money Oregon's schools would need to meet state education reform goals and provide a quality education to all…

Oregon created a model for measuring secondary vocational education effectiveness and developed and field tested instruments to carry out the design. The five key features of this model were student and societal needs, program components, program outcomes (occupational, educational, ancillary, and societal), multiple perspectives for judging…

Many people believe that a lack of clear goals has limited the quality of education in America, where local school districts have traditionally been responsible for setting educational standards. Working in isolation, schools have failed to reach consensus on goals and standards, and teachers are hard-pressed to motivate students to achieve. The…