School districts nationally reported spending a combined total of nearly $60 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds through school year 2021-22, according to GAO's analysis of the Department of Education's (Education) data. About 80 percent of ESSER spending through school year 2021-22 went to addressing…

School climate is increasingly intertwined with efforts to create safe schools and improve social-emotional learning and academic outcomes. While current definitions of school climate implicate the decisions and actions of school staff members, the majority of school climate research focuses on the perspectives of students. This study presents an…

Education researchers use surveys widely. Yet, critics question respondents' ability to provide high-quality responses. As schools increasingly use student surveys to drive policymaking, respondents' (lack of) motivation to provide quality responses may threaten the wisdom of using surveys for data-based decision-making. To better understand…

Signed into law on December 10, 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) presents education leaders with a unique opportunity to expand the definition of student success. Compared to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, ESSA empowers states to make more of the critical decisions related to accountability, school improvement, education spending,…

As educational practitioners and policymakers expand the range of student outcomes they assess, student perception surveys--particularly those targeting social-emotional learning--have grown in popularity. Despite excitement around the potential for measuring a wider array of important student outcomes, concerns about the validity of the…

In this policy brief, TransformEd provides policy recommendations for local and state leaders seeking to take a data-informed approach to SEL. We specifically crafted recommendations that incorporate the use of data because gathering data on SEL allows educators to make meaningful connections between student experiences, school culture, and…

This paper first outlines some of the challenges students and teachers are facing in schools around the country. These challenges include social issues such as violence, drugs and bulling. This coupled with the fact that many instructional programs follow the cognitive-only model and the current push for standardized testing has had a negative…

Until recently, teen pregnancy and birth rates had declined steadily in the United States in recent years. Despite these declines, the United States has the highest teen birth rate and one of the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among all industrialized nations. To help young people reduce their risk for pregnancy and STIs,…

Until recently, teen pregnancy and birth rates had declined in the United States. Despite these declines, U.S. teen birth and sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates remain among the highest in the industrialized world. Given the need to focus limited prevention resources on effective programs, Advocates for Youth undertook exhaustive reviews…