As women increasingly entered the labor force throughout the late 20th century, the challenges of balancing work and family came to the forefront. We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children--through duration expansions to the kindergarten day--to better understand mothers' and families' constraints.…

In 2021, California made major new investments to advance its commitment to early childhood education through universal preschool. One important investment was extending state funding for transitional kindergarten (TK), previously just for older 4-year-olds, to all 4-year-olds by 2025-26. To ensure the quality of new preschool investments,…

In 2021, California committed to making transitional kindergarten (TK)--a school-based preschool program initially designed for older 4-year-olds--available for all 4-year-olds by 2025-26. As TK becomes universal, California will need to greatly expand the early learning workforce. This brief provides estimates of how many TK teachers California…

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown a light on structural problems in education. Changing conditions, policy recommendations, and pressure from local communities have caused strain among educators and administrators across the nation. For rural districts already strained by shortages of teachers and administrators, the pandemic particularly raised…

Community colleges are beginning to build on guided pathways reforms in partnership with employers, universities, and K-12 schools to create cross-sector pathways to college and career opportunities for students--particularly those students traditionally underserved by higher education. The aim is to improve economic mobility for community…

Conservatoires train musicians to high levels of proficiency in performance and other 'principal study' disciplines, but often, teaching is perceived as a second-class profession, and little is known about how music students learn to facilitate music making in others. Yet, conservatoires have a responsibility to contribute to the development of…

Purpose: Principals are critical to school improvement and play a vital role in creating inclusive and high-performing schools. Yet, approximately one in five principals leave their school each year, and turnover is higher in schools that serve low-income students of color. Relatedly, high rates of teacher turnover exacerbate challenges associated…

This report evaluates the labor market impacts of Washington, DC's Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund (PEF), a pioneering initiative to address pay disparities between child care and early childhood education (CCEE) educators and K-12 teachers. In its first two years, the PEF has delivered supplement payments ranging from $10,000 to $14,000…

We examine the effects of offering full-day kindergarten as a replacement for half-day kindergarten on mothers' labor supply using the rollout of full-day kindergarten in Ontario, Canada. We find no effect on the extensive margin but found an effect on the intensive margin. In particular, we find that access to full-day kindergarten increases…

Concerns over the teaching workforce have been rising across Wisconsin in recent years, particularly since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. A series of Forum reports have raised warning flags about declining graduates from schools of education, record turnover among state and local government employees, and the rising use of emergency K-12…

The Graduate Education Committee of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) has collected data regarding the status of graduate education in school psychology for both specialist and doctoral programs since 2010. This report highlights trends across a 5-year period from the 2015-2016 academic year through 2019-2020. The data…

A theoretical framework grounded in constructionism and pragmatism theories supported research on learning by doing. This framework underpinned the purpose of this qualitative case study to explore how K-8 STEM teachers facilitated projects utilizing innovative technologies to solve community-based problems. The problem was a lack of connection…

Determining whether a state's young people are on track for a life with opportunity is a critical -- but diffcult -- task for governors and state leaders. States can be both awash in data and unable to easily access and use that data to inform policy. State longitudinal data systems that meaningfully connect workforce, higher education, K-12, and…

This study explores the effect of school reopenings during the COVID-19 pandemic on married women's labor supply. We proxy for in-person attendance at US K-12 schools using smartphone data from Safegraph and measure female employment, hours, and remote work using the Current Population Survey. Difference-in-differences estimates show that K-12…

California is expanding transitional kindergarten (TK) to become a universal preschool program for all four-year-old children. Upwards of 300,000 children are expected to enroll in universal transitional kindergarten (UTK) by 2025, requiring thousands of additional lead teachers and classroom aides to meet lower student-to-teacher ratio…