State early childhood administrators are planning to strategically invest the federal appropriations in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) to address disruptions in children's care and learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. State leaders must consider how this one-time funding can be used effectively while understanding the context around…

The work of the National Forum on Education Statistics (Forum) is a key aspect of the National Cooperative Education Statistics System (Cooperative System). The Cooperative System was established to produce and maintain, with the cooperation of the states, comparable and uniform education information and data that are useful for policymaking at…

How can states help ensure that their systems are providing schools and educators with the essential data for improvement efforts? One powerful strategy is to collaborate with partners using a continuous improvement approach. Six states have been doing just that--working together to investigate and address specific, high-priority, high-impact ways…

Educators employ different methods of teaching and learning to help their students succeed. One such method is personalized learning, which aims to tailor instruction to the needs, talents, and skills of each individual learner. Rapid advances in technology platforms and digital content over the last decade have enabled more widespread use of…

Since the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) launched the Collaborating States Initiative (CSI) to support social and emotional learning (SEL) in 2016, participation has grown dramatically. CASEL initially planned to work with five states. In the past two years, the CSI team and its partners have worked with 25,…

Concerns about the equitable distribution of school funding within and across school districts have led to new federal data collections on school-level expenditures. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) required states to collect and report, for the first time, school-level data on both personnel and non-personnel expenditures…

State education agencies are investing more time and effort to communicate effectively and engage with district, school and classroom leaders, parents, students and other key audiences about the important changes happening in their States. They are using myriad tools to do so, including forums, meetings, direct contact, mainstream and social…

This publication explores quickly deployable, high-impact tactics that State education agencies (SEAs) and local educational agencies (LEAs) are using to make their evaluation systems more manageable. It also examines the foundation upon which States and school districts must build high-quality, manageable evaluation systems.

This publication highlights Rhode Island's Collaborative Learning for Outcomes (CLO), a new progress monitoring process that leads to two-way communication between the State and its 50 participating and two involved local educational agencies.

The Obama administration's Race to the Top competitive grant program initiated an unprecedented wave of state teacher-evaluation reform across the country. To date, most of the scholarly analysis of this activity has focused on the design of the evaluation instruments or the implementation of the new evaluations by districts and schools. But…

This brief provides an overview of the Instructional Improvement System (IIS) models for State education agencies in Hawaii, Kentucky, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island, along IIS goals in the following areas: (1) Standards and Curriculum; (2) Instructional Practices; (3) Assessment and Growth; (4) Learner Profiles; (5) Data…

Locally controlled public schools are one of the cornerstones of our nation's democracy, yet many schools are not preparing students for success. Far too many students are not graduating, and many of those who do graduate are woefully unprepared for college or a meaningful career. Successfully initiating and sustaining meaningful improvements in…

Response to intervention (RTI) is an approach to instruction, assessment, and intervention that enables early identification of students who are experiencing academic or behavioral difficulties. The jurisdictions served by the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands expressed interest in a study of whether and how state education…

This document presents a summary of the report, "How Eight State Education Agencies in the Northeast and Islands Region Identify and Support Low-Performing Schools and Districts." This larger report describes and analyzes how eight state education agencies in the Northeast and Islands Region (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New…

This report describes and analyzes how eight state education agencies in the Northeast and Islands Region (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, and Vermont) identify and support low-performing schools and districts under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Data collection for the report…