Across OECD countries, the increasing demand for evidence-based policy making has further led governments to design policies jointly with clear measurable objectives, and to define relevant indicators to monitor their achievement. This paper discusses the importance of such indicators in supporting the implementation of education policies.…

Worried about the large number of young children from low-income families entering school in their communities, many city and county leaders wonder whether quality preschool might help close the school readiness gap. Longitudinal studies of model programs that began decades ago show that these programs improved not only these children's school…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have ardent supporters and strong critics. The actual effect of the CCSS, however, will depend much less on the standards themselves than on how they are used. Two factors are particularly crucial. The first is whether states invest in the necessary curricular and instructional resources and supports, and the…

Given established links between social-emotional skills and academic achievement, there is growing support for implementing universal social/behavioral interventions in early schooling (Jones & Bouffard, 2012). Advocates have been particularly interested in implementing such programming in low income urban schools where students are likely to…

Home visiting is one tool used to prevent child abuse and improve child well-being by providing education and services in families' homes through parent education and connection to community resources. This toolkit provides state policymakers and advocates with strategies for extending and expanding access to state- or federally-funded home…

This report is designed to help state and local policymakers identify the policy changes needed to expand access to quality personalized learning in their states and communities, and to give them the tools to make those changes. Each of the 15 policy ideas, or "plays," in this playbook provides background context on the challenges it is…

Communities across the country are grappling with different approaches to improving their schools. Introducing or expanding charter schools is one of the approaches that states and school districts have considered or implemented. Charter schools serve more than 5 percent of public school students nationwide and make up close to 7 percent of all…

The extent to which funds under the Title I of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) should be expended on training services has been a topic of discussion by Congress, which is considering reauthorization of WIA. This paper describes a policy initiative by Illinois that requires Local Workforce Investment Areas (LWIAs) under Title I of WIA to expend…

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (P.L. 94-142) is used to illustrate policy implementation analyses. Significant barriers to policy implementation for this law include power relationships between parents and schools, classroom teachers' feelings of uncertainty resulting from changed role expectations, and economic problems. (Author)

This document contains revised policy and guidelines for the external evaluation of new graduate-level programs in the Oregon University System. Each institution in the Oregon University System that requests a new graduate-level or graduate degree program or a significant new option within an existing graduate program must complete an external…

Although Public Law 94-142 (Education for All Handicapped Children Act) raised public awareness of the civil rights of the handicapped, the policy problems that it was intended to solve included more than civil rights issues. In particular, the law did not provide for modifications of its policies in improving public education opportunities for…

Project Follow Through involved a diverse and major set of implementation problems: (1) The initial program mandate for an action program clashed with the later switch to an experimental focus; (2) The selection of curriculum rather than structural changes as the major intervention led to greater uncertainty regarding the practices to be…

This book surveys current commitment to computers in education in many countries, with emphasis on use in Australia. For discussion of computer-related programs, countries other than Australia are categorized as (1) under-developed and uncertain--China, Thailand, and Yugoslavia; (2) developed but reluctant--Japan, Germany, and Sweden; and (3)…

Although a sustained campaign has been underway to preserve published materials of importance to scholarly research in the United States, there has not been a similar impetus for the preservation of unpublished materials and the kinds of collections held by archives. A systematic methodology for developing preservation priorities for archival…

This guide was prepared to aid school system vocational education advisory committee members and instructors in fulfilling their roles and responsibilities. The booklet covers the following topics: purposes and role of the advisory committee; advisory committee rationale; organizational goals; responsibilities of advisory committee members;…