High-quality, stable child care and early education (CCEE) can have lasting, positive impacts on children. However, the challenges of recruiting, strengthening, and retaining the CCEE workforce are well documented. CCEE educators typically have low levels of formal education and compensation; limited opportunities for education, training, and…

Questionnaires routinely measure unipolar and bipolar constructs using rating scales. Such rating scales can offer odd numbers of points, meaning that they have explicit middle alternatives, or they can offer even numbers of points, omitting the middle alternative. By examining four types of questions in six national or regional telephone surveys,…

Educators and researchers often use research-based assessments before and after instruction to measure the efficacy of courses. Limited resources exist for interpreting assessment results, particularly for attitudinal surveys. We present analyses and representations created with data from 192 introductory physics courses that educators and…

Student voice may seem like a new concept; however, it has a long history of being engrained in public schools in the United States. The trend towards incorporating and expanding student voice opportunities in high school is based on the tenets of democracy. Educators seek to provide an opportunity for students to practice democracy in their…

Behavioral threat assessment is a widely used violence prevention strategy in schools, but there is little research on how frequently a student attempts to carry out a threat of violence after a threat assessment and whether schools accurately recognize and classify these cases. This study investigated: 1) how often students attempted violence and…

In the United States, sexual violence in K-12 public schools saw a 55% increase in incidents from the 2015-2016 school year to the 2017-2018 school year. These incidents included sexual violence by school employees against students and peers against other peers. The current study estimated the overall weighted average number of sexual…

Leadership that is intentionally and thoughtfully distributed across many in a school building has the potential to bring about positive change for all students and to empower and engage teachers in such a way that makes them more likely to stay in the classroom. Given the potential of distributed leadership, understanding it more deeply is…

This report presents the results from the third biennial Texas OER Landscape Survey, administered in 2023 and commissioned by the Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas (DigiTex) and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB). The survey aimed to explore the open educational resources (OER) landscape, policies, and practices at…

Public school districts use private contractors to provide support services in an effort to save money, improve services and better prioritize district resources. The Mackinac Center has surveyed school districts about their use of contractors since 2001. This year's survey revealed that 69.7% of schools contract out for food, custodial or…

The 2020 General Assembly directed the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) to develop a plan for implementing a statewide survey of institutional expenditures by program and academic discipline at Virginia's public higher education institutions, and submit a report and recommendations to the Governor and the Chairs of the House…

Coach education and training on character development can improve young people's sport experiences. However, less well understood is the prevalence of coaches trained on character-building strategies and whether those that participate in and value training on these topics have higher self-efficacy and success as a coach (e.g., defined by their…

The prevalence of students with visual impairments varies across the United States, yet limited analysis exists on how many students receive special education services. The following study collected population data on students with visual impairments for the 2017-2018 school year and ran focus groups with state-level administrators to understand…

Michigan's public school districts are government entities that occasionally use private contractors to provide them with support services. The 2018 privatization survey found that 70.5 percent of Michigan's school districts -- 380 of the 539 districts in the state -- contract out for food, custodial or transportation services. This is a slight…

These are the appendices for the report, "State and District Use of Title II, Part A Funds in 2018-19." Title II, Part A of ESEA (Title II-A) provides over $2 billion per year in funding to states and districts to support effective instruction through the preparation, recruitment, and training of educators. The Every Student Succeeds Act…

Public school districts are government entities, but they rely on the private sector to support their function of delivering educational services to students. Private contractors, for example, construct district buildings, write textbooks and manufacture the supplies necessary to keep the district operational, among other things. And over the past…