The Region 15 Comprehensive Center (R15CC) partnered with the California Department of Education to create resources for local education agencies (LEAs) to guide the development of well-written goals for their Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs). The LCAP is a three-year plan that California LEAs use to set goals, plan actions, and…

Political interest in Research Infrastructures on a European scale has been a new phenomenon, marked in the early 2000s with the launch of the Lisbon Strategy and the European Research Area. European Research Infrastructure policy then developed through, first, the strategic incorporation of incumbents through new modes of coordination; second,…

Parents and the public use accountability data to judge if schools are doing a good or a bad job educating their students. However, using the current data, schools perceived as "good" tend to be in better-resourced districts and enroll higher percentages of wealthy and white students. Schools perceived as "bad" tend to be in…

States continue to work to implement statewide accountability systems; publicly report extensive information on State and local report cards, as required under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA); and provide additional resources to schools designated for support and improvement. These systems are vital for improving outcomes…

The primary source of federal aid to elementary and secondary education is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The ESEA was initially adopted in 1965 (P.L. 89-10), and was most recently reauthorized and amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA; P.L. 114-95), which authorized appropriations for ESEA programs through FY2020.…

This document was created as a resource to identify and describe four properties of effective resource allocation systems to help anchor the resource allocation review process in the State of Illinois and build districts' understanding of these properties. An effective resource allocation system will have the following properties: (1)…

Many school educators struggle to reconcile the onslaught of mandatory and competing, top-down policies. Educators must merge policies into a singular plan that reflects the local stakeholders' goals and values. Given the federal and state accountability movement, schools are forced to build capacity around the use of on-site data and research…

Through a series of conversations, Fintan McCutcheon and Joanna Haynes explore McCutcheon's reflections on school leadership in the contexts of the Educate Together movement (in the Republic of Ireland) and, specifically, in his aspiration to build an optimally democratic school in Balbriggan. Much of the academic and professional literature on…

The Smarter Balanced Assessment System consists of three components: (1) interim assessments designed to support teaching and learning throughout the year; (2) a suite of tools and resources in Tools for Teachers that support classroom-based formative assessment practices; and (3) end-of-year summative assessments designed for accountability…

This article presents a new tool called Critical Evaluation Capital (CEC) designed to address issues of equity and social justice in program evaluation. CEC is grounded in the tenants of critical race theory and inspired by Yosso's work on community cultural wealth which raises critical issues of positionality and access. CEC is a system for…

Universities are indispensable for a free and prosperous society. Their mission depends on a campus culture of free expression and intellectual diversity. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) seeks to hold American colleges and universities accountable to their missions. ACTA now provides a blueprint to help higher education regain…

In most K-12 school districts across the country, the beginning of the 2021-22 school year has been different from what school and district leaders expected and were planning for. Many spent the spring and summer sowing the seeds of their ESSER plans, allocating federal investments to high-impact strategies designed to bear fruit for years to…

It is clear that young people bore the brunt of the pandemic's impact. Disrupted learning, sometimes stretching for two years, forced many students off track and behind academically. Leaders are now faced an unprecedented need to make smart investments with federal relief funds in efforts that accelerate student learning. District leaders should…

This brief is one in a series aimed at providing K-12 education decision makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students during and following the novel coronavirus pandemic. It addresses one central question: Recognizing longstanding educational inequities, what research-backed practices can…

This paper discusses educating stakeholders of algorithmic systems (systems that apply Artificial Intelligence/Machine learning algorithms) in the areas of algorithmic fairness, accountability, transparency and ethics (FATE). We begin by establishing the need for such education and identifying the intended consumers of educational materials on the…