This policy playbook presents a comprehensive set of strategies aimed at empowering state policymakers, governors, and state agency leaders to cultivate a strong, diverse, and multigenerational workforce capable of driving the development and maintenance of our nation's new infrastructure. By implementing the following recommendations, state…

Despite federal laws mandating services to support their postsecondary transitions, students with disabilities overall pursue less continued education and vocational training and get fewer jobs than their peers without disabilities. To enhance outcomes for students with disabilities after they exit high school, this article describes how state…

With constantly changing needs in a global economy, more flexibility in educational accountability for states and districts, and a focus on high standards for all students, state educational agencies (SEAs) and local educational agencies (LEAs) are increasingly defining what skills, competencies, and knowledge graduates should have by developing a…

The number of jobs in computer science (CS) and information technology (IT) is projected to grow rapidly in the United States over the next decade as the demand for workers expands and current CS and IT workers retire. Against the larger backdrop of growth in CS and IT employment and wages nationally, Ohio is looking for ways to grow and diversify…

The policy landscape around curriculum selection and implementation is thorny: the federal government cannot mandate any state or local curricula, state policy varies widely, and local schools and districts often lack the capacity to support and sustain detailed reviews of materials and ongoing teacher training in quality curricula. Cultural and…

When aligned with career pathways and other education and training programs in the community, IET programs offered in prisons and jails enable participants to make significant progress toward their education and training goals that can be continued after release. This guide summarizes lessons learned from the IET in Corrections project and serves…

This Blueprint is a distillation of what the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) has learned across nearly four decades of research and working shoulder-to-shoulder with partners to support education leaders and practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and community stakeholders to study, design, and build equitable,…

Economic downturns, like a global pandemic, magnify the need for timely, accurate, and complete data that policymakers need to make data-informed decisions that will help workers, businesses, and their communities recover. Good data helps to better understand what's working and what's not in terms of creating greater access to workforce…

Outstanding federal student loan debt exceeds $1.6 trillion and is owed by about 45 million borrowers. Since taking office, the Biden Administration has taken various actions to address student loan debt. These actions have ranged in scope (both in terms of borrower populations affected and associated modification costs), rationales, and the…

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) refers to the process through which individuals learn and apply social, emotional, behavioral, and character skills required to succeed in schooling, the workplace, relationships, and citizenship. In public discussion of SEL, not everyone can quite agree on what it is. To some, it involves a set of tools for…

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, or research resources that are offered freely to users in at least one form and that either reside in the public domain or have been released under an open copyright license that allows for its free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with attribution. Course marking (also called…

The pandemic has caused a major economic shift for businesses and workers. Countless companies have had to quickly upskill their workers, equipping them with the skills they need to pivot to digital or remote services. As a result, the importance of efficiently and effectively training and onboarding workers with the right skills for the job has…

Little is known about the way that teachers cope with the formalisation of professional inquiry in New Zealand. Despite its systemic implementation as an accountability-driven initiative to improve the quality of education, there are varied interpretations and enactments of professional inquiry. In this article, we will explore one teacher's…

The Washington Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Committee (referred to in this report as "the Committee" and "Committee") was established in 2019 through Senate Bill 5082 (SB 5082) to address the growing body of evidence that shows the need for improving a student's social and emotional competencies which are critical to every…

"Continuous Improvement in High Schools" gives educators and policymakers an accessible, actionable framework to address one of the nation's most important educational priorities: improving high school graduation and postsecondary preparedness rates. Martha Abele Mac Iver and Robert Balfanz, national experts in dropout prevention, apply…