Hot Topics in Education
As an extension of our research advocacy, each month NCEA gathers and shares the latest research and data from across the country on issues affecting K-12 students on the path to college and career readiness (CCR). To examine Hot Topics resources organized by NCEA focus area, use navigation keys provided to the right on this page.
Building Capacity ArchiveSchool and school systems must address the calls by community and business leaders for students who are better prepared for college and skilled careers. As school and school system develop plans to address this concern, it is important that special attention be paid to whether or not these schools and school systems have the organizational capacity needed to implement these plans. These resources provide information on efforts to increase the ability of communities, schools, and school systems to help students reach high academic standards.
2009 Data Quality Campaign Annual Progress Report on State Education Data Systems
On November 23, the Data Quality Campaign (NCEA and ACT are partners) released the results of its annual survey of the states at the annual policy meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers in Naples, FL. Every state is on track to have a longitudinal data system that follows student progress from preschool through college by 2011. Key findings from the 2009 survey of all 50 states include: 1) 11 states have all ten essential Elements of a longitudinal data system; 2) 31 states have eight or more of the Elements; 3) only 2 states have fewer than five Elements; 4) all but one state collect student-level enrollment, demographic, and program participation data, or collect student-level graduation and dropout data. Overall, states are capitalizing on the new momentum caused by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and are promoting the effective use of this data to inform decision-making and teaching and to improve outcomes. Read More…
A Coherent Approach to High School Improvement: A Needs Assessment Tool
This tool was also recently released by the National High School Center. Building off of the Center’s Eight Elements of High School Improvement: A Mapping Framework, this tool is designed to help districts and schools assess current high school education policies and practices, identify areas of strengths and limitations, and implement coherent and sustainable school reform initiatives. Read More…
The Center for American Progress released a report that looks at a small but growing number of community schools bridging the gap between the provision of antipoverty services and an excellent academic program. They capitalize on the school’s physical space and access to students and families in order to deliver much-needed services in a central, accessible location. Community schools partner with nonprofits and local agencies to provide students with health care, academic enrichment, mental and behavioral health services, and other youth development activities—without burdening school staff. Read More…
Achieving Graduation for All: A Governor's Guide to Dropout Prevention and Recovery
A new report from the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) addresses the alarming rate at which students in the United States drop out of high school. It recommends actions governors should take to reduce the incidence of students not completing high school, including: promote high school graduation for all; target youth at risk of dropping out; re-engage youth who have dropped out of school; and provide rigorous, relevant options for earning a high school diploma. Read More…
America's Opportunity: Teacher Effectiveness and Equity in K–12 Classrooms
This second biennial report of the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality calls on education stakeholders to create systemic approaches to recruiting, supporting, and evaluating teachers to ensure that all students have access to highly effective teachers. The report synthesizes current research on teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of K–12 teachers in light of increasing federal policy interest in the issue. Read More…
Answering Questions About What Works in Improving Low-Performing Schools and Districts
This brief review from the Education Commission of the States summarizes research studies addressing school improvement. The review addresses the question of whether accountability mechanisms drive school improvement. Read More…
Are New York City’s Public Schools Preparing Students for Success in College?
The Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University issued this study, which outlines what a coherent and comprehensive system should offer and makes recommendations to strengthen success in college admission and completion for all the city's high school students. New York City’s public schools are graduating more students, and more of them are going on to college, but the high rates of remedial course-taking and low graduation rates indicate a need to improve academic preparation. This report addresses four key questions about college readiness and concludes with some observations about building a readiness system. Read More…
Beyond Standardized Tests: Investing in a Culture of Learning
This background paper was released by the Forum for Education and Democracy at a Capitol Hill briefing honoring the work of educator, and Forum Founder, Ted Sizer. The broad argument of the paper is that for children to learn the knowledge and skills they need for the 21st century, systems must be developed that enable educators and schools to become healthy, high-functioning learning environments that prepare all children to be life-long learners as well as productive and engaged citizens. The paper reiterates older stereotypes about standardized testing. Read More…
This comprehensive study of the nation’s eight remaining inter-district school desegregation programs – which were expressly created to enable disadvantaged, black and Latino students cross school district boundary lines and attend affluent, predominantly white suburban public schools – has found that these programs help close black-white and Latino-white achievement gaps, improve racial attitudes and lead to long-term mobility and further education for the students of color who participate. It was released by the Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. Read More…
Cages of Their Own Design: Five Strategies to Help Education Leaders Break Free
The American Enterprise Institute released this brief paper describing the perceived hurdles to education reform faced by superintendents and what can be done to overcome them. Key points include: 1) statutory and contractual hurdles to reform are often worsened by the culture of the K-12 environment; 2) school administrators are often unaware that they have the power to clear those hurdles; 3) and the crucial step in breakthrough leadership is shifting from a defensive to a change-agent mind-set. The paper offers five strategies that can help leaders, policymakers, and reformers break out of the cage of district design. Read More…
Collaborating for Student Success (Part 1): Effective Teaching and Leadership
The first of three reports to be released by the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher was released this month. Part 1 examines views about responsibility and accountability; what collaboration looks like in schools, and if and to what degree it is currently practiced. Sixty-seven percent of teachers and 78 percent of principals surveyed said more collaboration among teachers and school leaders would have a “major impact” on student achievement. Read More…
Connecting Policy and Data: What are Your State’s Critical Policy Question?
The Data Quality Campaign issued this publication to explore each state’s need to have a common P–20/workforce vision and to develop key policy questions to drive the development of state data systems. The paper is designed to help states as they seek to meet the Recovery Act (ARRA) requirements for following individuals through the P–20 pipeline and into the workforce by 2011. State progress would be expedited by using the framework in the paper to guide the development and implementation of their cross-agency data sharing efforts. The key points include: defining a common state vision for the system; clarify privacy laws to ensure that personally identifiable information is protected and data can be shared across agencies; and develop common data standards to facilitate interoperability of systems. It also provides a set of resources (appendices) to help states begin this task. Read More…
Education Reform Starts Early: Lessons from New Jersey’s Pre-K 3rd Reform Efforts
This report from the New America Foundation seeks to describe how New Jersey became a national leader in early education and PreK-3rd student literacy, identify its successes and challenges, draw lessons from its experience for policymakers in other states and nationally, and provide recommendations for New Jersey policymakers to translate progress to date into sustained, large scale learning gains. Read More…
Expanded Learning: Making It Work for High School Students
The Campaign for High School Equity released this issue brief to advocate that educators and policymakers should substantively reframe and expand teaching and learning to include additional supports and opportunities for students that go beyond the traditional school day. Expanded learning programs promote student engagement in academic and enrichment activities, provide more time for academic learning, and lead to greater preparedness for college and work. Read More…
This report from the Center for American Progress finds that expanded learning time models have enabled many schools and their partners to collaborate more intensively and more strategically than they did when the schools were operating on a traditional school schedule. Beyond providing the essential ingredient of more time, expanded learning time has catalyzed schools to redesign their approach by developing a school-wide academic focus in response to student data. Extended learning time schools are taking advantage of the additional time they now have to plan and implement new instructional strategies to better align core academics, enrichment, support services, and family engagement strategies closely to their instructional focus. Read More…
Fighting for Quality and Equality, Too
This paper from the Education Trust outlines ten steps state policymakers and school district leaders can take now that hold the promise to make a difference in teacher quality and equitable access to the best teachers for low-income students and students of color. It focuses on the effective use of federal grant funds under both competitive grants of the stimulus Act (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) and regular formula grant programs. If state leaders invest resources and energy wisely, they don’t have to choose between excellence and equity. Read More…
Hopes, Fears, & Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charter Schools in 2009
This fifth annual report published by the National Charter School Research Project (NCSRP) at the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education, contains several positive indicators about charter schools’ ability to improve public education. The report suggests a steady appeal for charter schools continued in 2009, especially from low-income and minority parents. It finds that school culture must exude an urgency that communicates that the work is important, a tight alignment of lesson content with state curriculum, and frequent formative assessments that mirror high-stakes test conditions and items. Read More…
This paper from the New Teacher Project provides a framework and practical strategies that will enable states to establish and achieve clear teacher effectiveness goals in the context of Race to the Top competitive grant applications and national goals. Now that the U.S. Department of Education has issued final guidance on Race to the Top and states begin to put together their Phase 1 applications, The New Teacher Project offers state applicants a blueprint for what they believe will be foundational to any winning proposal. Read More…
How Does Full-Day Kindergarten Affect Student Achievement
This resource, prepared by WestEd, reviews research in the last decade that examined the impact of full-day kindergarten, as compared with half-day programs, on student achievement in reading and mathematics. Read More…
How Federal Policy Can Reverse the “Widget Effect.”
The New Teacher Project (TNTP) released this blueprint for how federal education funding could be better used to address students' most pressing need: effective teachers. The policy brief follows up on their 2009 report on the “Widget Effect” and illustrates how current funding priorities designed to improve teacher quality inadvertently reinforce the tendency of school systems to treat teachers like interchangeable parts rather than acknowledging and responding to differences in teacher effectiveness. It urges policymakers to use the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to refocus Title II spending (High Quality Teachers and Principals) on four overarching goals for improving teacher effectiveness. Read More…
This report was released by the Center on Education Policy to synthesize findings from five years of state-level research and local case studies of school restructuring. The research covered six states, California, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New York, and Ohio as well as 23 districts and 48 schools in the six states. More than 260 state officials, local administrators, teachers, and other school staff were interviewed for the studies. The report concludes with recommendations for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Read More…
Inaugural Overview of States’ Actions To Leverage Data To Improve Student Success
According to the Data Quality Campaign’s annual survey of states, the states have made remarkable progress in developing longitudinal data systems that can follow student progress over time, from early childhood through 12th grade and into postsecondary education through implementation of the 10 Essential Elements. The 10 State Actions are the fundamental steps states must put in place to change the culture around how data are used to inform decisions to improve system and student performance. Forty-three states have taken three or fewer of the actions, which call for states to expand their data systems to include higher education and workforce information; ensure that the data can be accessed, analyzed and used; and build the capacity of stakeholders to use the data. Read More…
This publication was a companion to the one above and released by the Alliance for Excellent Education at the same event. This guide provides parents and community members with suggestions on how to determine whether their local high school is adequately preparing all of its students for a successful future and what they can do to help turn that vision into reality. Read More…
Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Innovation
This new report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Center for American Progress focuses on the future of education and what states are doing to prepare themselves for the challenges that lie ahead. The report took this focus because, regardless of current academic accomplishments in each state, the organizations believe that innovative educational practices are vital to laying the groundwork for continuous and transformational change. They define innovation as leveraging new tools, talent, and management strategies to craft smart solutions. This report follows up on the original report of two years ago. Read More…
Linking Secondary and Postsecondary Systems – Lessons from Indiana
This issue brief from the American Youth Policy Forum spotlights policies and practices that improve college and career readiness by strengthening the transition from high school to postsecondary education. This issue brief frames the overall issue of linking the secondary and postsecondary systems and describes the elements of success in Indiana including cross-system collaboration to align high school education with skills and knowledge needed at the postsecondary level and in the workplace; use of acceleration mechanisms and other academic strategies to bridge the educational systems; innovative approaches for teacher preparation and professional development; and the state's ongoing efforts to develop a data system linking K-12, higher education, and the labor market. Read More…
Managing for Results in America’s Great City Schools
This paper by Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools was presented at a Thomas B Fordham Institute forum on how schools and districts can tighten their belts in the current economy while serving students better. The day-long session featured many papers that offer several suggestions, including taking a hard look at personnel decisions, converting what districts spend into a per-unit cost to better track expenditures, and making business decisions based on data. Read More…
This issue brief from Learning Point Associates provides a useful scan of publicly available measures particularly intended to evaluate principal performance. The brief evaluates instruments used for hiring, performance assessment, and tenure decisions. Among other findings, the brief suggests that although there is considerable interest in school principal quality and accountability, few principal performance assessments have been rigorously developed or make details of psychometric testing available for public review. Read More…
New York City's Strategy for Improving High Schools: An Overview
The Alliance for Excellent Education held a forum with Chancellor Joel Kline to feature the findings in this paper. The analysis describes how New York City leaders have prioritized redesigning high schools and improving outcomes as part of a districtwide reform effort. This brief describes the theory of action underlying the efforts of the New York City Department of Education and some of the specific strategies it has employed to improve high schools. Read More…
This report from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation focuses on the use of education data for improvements in teaching and learning. The report discusses ways to give teachers real-time information in user-friendly ways. The report also makes recommendations on how to build the right infrastructure in schools and districts to support performance management, such as developing a culture committed to collecting and using data and assembling the right technology so teachers, principals, and central administrators have the types of information they need. It also provides examples of urban districts headed in this direction. Read More…
Preparing Teachers of English Language Learners
This paper was released by the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality and addresses the challenges of preparing general education and ELL teachers for classroom contexts that include a diverse array of languages and cultures. It also includes an method for evaluating teacher preparation programs and professional development in this area. Read More…
This report from the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy highlights the role that practice-based teacher preparation programs play in improving the ranks of the teaching profession in Massachusetts. The report promotes practice-based teacher preparation programs as a means for attracting highly qualified professionals as well as recent college graduates with degrees in high need subject areas like mathematics and science to consider a career in teaching. Read More…
Prioritizing the Nation’s Dropout Factories
A new brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education calls on federal policymakers to perform “legislative triage” by devoting attention to the lowest-performing high schools and immediately improving or replacing the most severely “injured” schools. The brief includes a state-by-state breakdown of dropout factories and the percentage of high schools students who attend them. Read More…
This report from MDRC offers lessons to policymakers and administrators on program design, management and staffing, and professional development issues that arose during the Foundations of Learning program implementation in Newark, NJ. In order to enhance the quality of preschool programs, the Foundations of Learning program promoted emotionally positive, behaviorally supportive classrooms by providing teachers with intensive in-class training and support, as well as one-on-one clinical services for children who needed extra attention. Read More…
Race to the Top: Accelerating College and Career Readiness
Achieve prepared four guides to help state leaders participating in the American Diploma Project to take advantage of this competition. The guides look at RttT through a college and career ready lens, offering specific advice and examples of promising practices to help states build on the work they have already begun. In four separate briefs, they provide recommendations for meeting the Race to the Top guidelines beyond the minimum criteria in each of the core reform areas states are asked to address in their plans: Standards and Assessments; P-20 Longitudinal Data Systems; Teacher Effectiveness; and Low-Performing Schools. Read More…
Report on Teacher Reading Strategies from an International Perspective
This new report from the National Center for Education Statistics contains the results of survey data from teachers and school administrators in 45 countries that participate in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. It attempts to identify best practices. The report found that while literacy coaches and specialists have proliferated in American schools, the most used approach around the world is to engage parents in helping their children learn to read. Read More…
Research Findings and Action Items to Support Effective Educational Policymaking
This publication is a synthesis of Wallace Foundation research intended to be of use to policymakers at all levels of education who are developing comprehensive approaches to achieving the Race to the Top reform objectives and other federal strategies to improve public education. Drawing from research in educational leadership, out-of-school-time learning, and arts education, the report presents evidence-based policies and practices critical to the success of educational reforms at the local, district, and state levels. Read More…
This joint survey report from Learning Point Associates and Public Agenda found that the most popular indicator of instructional effectiveness among classroom educators is student engagement in coursework, with 92 percent of public school teachers surveyed rating it as a “good” or “excellent” measure. The report looks at how instructional effectiveness should be measured, as well as how it could be improved, and the findings are not well-aligned with current education policy initiatives. The most popular indicator of instructional effectiveness among classroom educators is student engagement in coursework (92% of teachers). Only 56 percent of teachers rated student performance on standardized tests as a good or excellent teacher-effectiveness indicator. Read More…
Rewriting the Job Description: The Teaching Profession in the Twenty-first Century
This “Outlook” paper from the American Enterprise Institute reexamines what the teaching profession should look like in the 21st century, stepping back from the status quo and revisiting existing assumptions. It looks at expanding the hiring pool beyond recent college graduates, staffing schools in ways that maximize the value of talented teachers, and using technology to increase teacher effectiveness are smarter ways for schools to approach the human capital challenge. Read More…
School Improvement by Design: Lessons from a Study of Comprehensive School Reform Programs
This study by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) attempts to figure out why such comprehensive or school-wide programs have succeeded or failed. At the time the study got under way, "comprehensive school reform" was the promising intervention in schools. While the school improvement discussion under the Obama administration is focused on other approaches, the study's lessons apply to any kind of "design-based" intervention for schools, the authors say. Read More…
State High School Exit Exams: Trends in Test Programs, Alternate Pathways, and Pass Rates
The Center on Education Policy released its 8th annual report on high school exit exams this month. The report identifies long-term trends in state exit exam policies and student performance and highlights a growing trend among states to establish alternate pathways to graduation for students who are struggling to pass exit exams. The report profiles the 26 states that are, or will soon be, implementing exit exams. Read More…
STEMing the Teacher Shortage Tide
This report from the National Association for Alternative Certification, in collaboration with IBM and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, focuses on how corporations, universities, and local school districts can form partnerships to address the critical shortage of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) candidates to pursue careers in these fields as well as to teach in K-12 schools. The report outlines a framework to support possibilities for successful collaborations. Read More…
Strategic Management of Human Capital released this call to action outlining the steps necessary to improve teacher and principal talent. In this report, SMHC offers 20 policy recommendations for state and district actions to improve student achievement by recruiting, developing, evaluating, compensating and retaining more effective teachers and principals. Read More…
Teacher Layoffs: Rethinking “Last-Hired, First-Fired” Policies
The National Council on Teacher Quality used its database to examine district policies, some mandated by state law, for making layoff decisions. The overwhelming majority of school districts use seniority as the most important determinant of layoff decisions. It has been assumed that a seniority system produces the best results for children, under the assertion that the most experienced teachers are better teachers. This assumption has proven not to be, on average, true. Research finds that teachers in their third year of teaching are generally about as effective as long-tenured teachers. The paper includes recommendations to help school districts navigate difficult layoff decisions while keeping student needs front and center in the process. Read More…
The Alliance for Excellent Education released this policy brief on November 3 at a Washington, D.C., event that featured exemplary teachers and administrators validating its findings. The brief offers a new conception for secondary teacher preparation that ensures candidates are able to prepare students for college and career success after high school, encourages a shift to the skills, knowledge, and competencies candidates should have once they become classroom teachers of record, highlights the need for improved teacher performance assessments and data systems, and contemplates how federal policy can support the realization of these goals. Read More…
The End of the Education Debate
This editorialized article by Chester Finn, Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation argues that the education-reform debate is creaking to a halt. No new way of thinking has emerged to displace the current wave of reform (¬standards, testing, and choice), and the conceptual framework built around them, but these approaches are proving ineffective. The ideas are not powerful enough to force the infrastructure of American primary and secondary education to undergo meaningful change. They have failed at bringing about the most important goal: dramatically improved student achievement. The author offers a new direction. Read More…
The Nation’s Path to Economic Growth: The Economic Benefits of Reducing the Dropout Rate
The Alliance for Excellent Education released its latest report with data showing that dropouts reduce revenues nationwide by losing $4.1 billion in additional income and losing $536 million in yearly state and local tax revenues. The report focused on 4,900 high schools in the 50 largest central urban areas and their surrounding geographic areas. The average graduation rate of the schools in 2008 was 69.8%, with more than 900 schools classified as “dropout factories,” or schools where fewer than 60% of freshmen make it to their senior year. Read More…
The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) issued this report that calls on state leaders to take part in the solutions phase of improving student achievement in high school and beyond—by setting more ambitious statewide, district- and school-level graduation rate goals, and by making improvement a central focus of school accountability laws. Based on the work of the SREB Committee to Improve High School Graduation Rates and Achievement, the 10 principles presented in this major SREB report provide a blueprint for high school reform. Read More…
The Numbers We Need: How the Right Metrics Could Improve K–12 Education
This policy brief from the American Enterprise Institute argues that successful organizations use extensive data analysis to guide decisions, but few K–12 districts have the metrics needed to do the same. The paper outlines several steps that, if implemented, could make data-driven management in education a reality and lays out key measurements districts should collect to make data analysis an effective tool for improving education. The author argues that in addition to student achievement data, districts need reliable measures that illuminate performance in areas like human resources, procurement, and data management. Read More…
The Online Learning Imperative: A Solution to Three Looming Crises in Education
This new brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education details how the use of online technology in today’s secondary school classrooms can strengthen the teacher workforce, improve student outcomes, and allow states to do more despite flat education budgets. It cites research on the student learning improvements from various types of online instruction and the benefits to school administrators for improving teacher quality. Read More…
The Center for American Progress and College Summit collaborated on this report about helping high schools learn in a systematic, methodical way how their graduates are doing, whether in four-year colleges, two-year colleges, vocational programs, or apprenticeships. The report provides recommendations for helping high schools use data to track their graduates and make decisions to help their current students. Read More…
Tracking an Emerging Movement: A Report on Expanded-Time Schools in America
The National Center on Time & Learning released this report documenting the state of expanded-time schools in America. The report draws from a database of 655 schools that have broken from the conventional school calendar in order to improve educational outcomes across 36 states serving more than 300,000 students. The report analyzes the schools’ key characteristics, as well as survey data on a subset of 245 schools on how the added time is utilized and funded. The database and report represent the broadest attempt so far to define and describe this growing and much watched field. Read More…
Tracking and Detracking: High Achievers in Massachusetts Middle Schools
In this new Thomas B. Fordham Institute report, Brookings scholar Tom Loveless examines tracking and detracking in Massachusetts middle schools, with particular focus on changes that have occurred over time and their implications for high-achieving students. Among the report's key findings: detracked schools have fewer advanced students in mathematics than tracked schools. Read More…
Transforming Schools to Meet the Needs of Students
This policy brief from the Center for American Progress provides an overview of the most recent research related to learning time, outlines current on-the-ground efforts to expand learning time and the lessons learned from these initiatives, and argues for making expanded learning time an essential part of a comprehensive school improvement strategy under ESEA. Read More…
Use of Education Data at The Local Level
This report was released yesterday by the Department of Education. Researchers surveyed officials from 529 districts, conducted site visits to 36 schools in 12 innovative districts, and analyzed data from a survey of 6,000 teachers nationwide. Key theme: most districts are looking for a way to link their multiple data systems. Over 60 percent of districts reported that lack of interoperability across data systems was a current barrier to expanded use of data-driven decision-making. Read More…
What Makes an Effective Principal? The Characteristics and Skills of Quality School Leaders
This working paper was produced for the Urban Institute’s Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER). Two key findings emerge: (1) principals become more effective as they acquire more experience overall and, in particular, as they acquire more experience at a particular school; (2) effective principals are able to attract and retain quality teachers. The evidence suggests high value-added principals are associated with higher turnover among less effective teachers and lower turnover among more effective teachers. Moreover, high value-added principals are not only able to retain effective teachers but are also able to recruit them from other schools. Read More…
What School Boards Need to Know: Data Conversations
This guide was developed jointly by the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) Association and the National School Boards Association for school boards to use in planning for and using data systemically. The guide examines the potential use of statewide longitudinal data systems to improve success. It examines using data to further the strategic goals and objectives of the school district – ultimately increasing student achievement for each individual student. Read More…
Who Will Teach? Experience Matters
This report was issued by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future showing that Baby Boom teachers who made lifelong commitments to education are retiring, and in many cases are taking their hard-earned wisdom with them. It contends that every state will be impacted by these shifts. Schools that have depended on a core of veteran teachers are already seeing those teachers retire, and in some cases are creating new work arrangements for teachers at or nearing retirement. Read More…