Since 2012, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has supported educational enrichment in rural areas by awarding over $3.3 million in grants to six outstanding organizations operating in Iowa, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. In this report, the authors combine the experiences of these organizations with findings from the…

Newark's high schools play an essential role in building the next generation of young minds for college and career readiness. Yet, high achievement may be unattainable if students miss too much school. Reasons for student absence vary. In Newark Public Schools, 48 percent of high school students were "chronically absent" in the 2015-16…

Newark's high schools play an essential role in building the next generation of young minds for college and career readiness. Yet, high achievement may be unattainable if students miss too much school. "Chronic absenteeism" is generally defined as missing 10 percent or more of enrolled days for any reason. Research has shown that when…

One objective of the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) School Improvement Grants (SIG) and Race to the Top (RTT) program is to help states enhance their capacity to support the turnaround of low-performing schools. This capacity may be important, given how difficult it is to produce substantial and sustained achievement gains in low-performing…

As a growing body of evidence links school success and early mathematical experiences, there is increasing interest in offering young children opportunities to bridge their informal understanding of mathematics with more formal concepts and processes. At the same time, many teachers and caregivers in the early care and education (ECE) field may…

This research documents and analyzes the nature and content of the knowledge that enables professors to foster learning for Black students. Specifically, it suggests that knowledge of the discourses of a students' community of origin, discourses often based on collective experience, are a valuable resource to professors in their efforts to promote…

Communicating Ocean Sciences to Informal Audiences (COSIA) is a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project consisting of seven long-term three-way partnerships between the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) and an informal science education institution (ISEI) partnered with an institution of higher education (IHE). Together, educators from the…

At the core of higher education is the experience of students whose focus for learning is often directed towards their future employability. In this paper, we explore the intersections between two large international research projects involving over 500 students. Interviews with students yielded their conceptions of learning and work in specific…

Background: Through its Children First initiative, New York City policymakers promoted collaborative inquiry as a process for helping administrators and teachers use student data to improve instruction and raise student achievement. Since 2007, city schools were expected to engage higher proportions of faculty in the inquiry work each year.…

Can a capacity building policy encourage school leaders to engage in professional development that will increase their focus on student achievement and understanding of instructional leadership? To explore this issue, school administrators were interviewed and a content analysis of plans for professional development generated during the first year…

What is the state of the art and science with regard to professional development for principals? What is the status of principal professional development in the four-state region of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia? This policy paper attempts to answer these two questions through a review of the literature, seven interviews, and a…

An important first step toward more effectively addressing the complexities of child care as a service for families and as an employment setting for workers in California is to develop a detailed picture of the child care workforce. On this premise, a study examined licensed family child care provider demographics, professional preparation, length…

Existing knowledge of computer conferencing is synthesized to indicate how it could address some of the current professional difficulties faced by Ontario teachers with regard to computers in the classroom, and strategies and guidelines for introducing such a computer-mediated learning approach into educational activities are provided. This report…

The documents enclosed in this report provide a comprehensive and systematic review of the progress made in developing a network organization capable of supporting nanoscience education for the public on a national scale. There is a logic to the studies that were done and to the reports that are included in this notebook. The following are the…

The first (exploratory) phase of the Learning in Science Project focused on science teaching/learning in the Form 1 to 4 level (ages 10 to 14) and sought to identify problems and difficulties in several areas. Provided in this paper are comments obtained during structured/unstructured interviews (from students, ex-students, teachers, headmasters,…