The Twilight School at Danbury High School in Connecticut helps students who are in danger of failing their freshman year to get back on track. In its first year, the program offered special credit-bearing after-school courses in biology and English to students who failed those classes in their first semester. The smaller class sizes and informal…

Schools are an important venue for implementing drug prevention programmes. School-based programmes have been shown to be an efficacious and cost-effective method of reducing substance use disorders among youth. There exists lack of consensus, however, regarding who makes the most effective programme providers. Drug prevention programmes are led…

Accumulating evidence indicates that student attendance is closely tied to a range of educational outcomes, and yet millions of students are chronically absent each year. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), schools are now held accountable for their students' attendance at a scale this country has never before seen. As such, this is a…

Developing and releasing a user-friendly school report card site is a process for ongoing engagement and improvement. This report describes the continuous improvement efforts of three states--Georgia, Illinois, and Virginia--to make their school and district report cards more user-friendly. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) has…

Because dual language learners (DLLs) represent a growing segment of the U.S. population, and because the early years are so foundational to long-term success, it is important that education leaders have clear insights about these students: who and where they are, the services they receive, and how they are progressing. Several advocates and…

The California Career Pathways Trust (CCPT), established in July 2014 by Assembly Bill 86 and administered by the California Department of Education (CDE), funded new regional consortia to establish career pathways that would lead high school students to a postsecondary credential or certification aligned with regional workforce needs. The…

The 2017-18 year marked a significant milestone in the future of accreditation activities for educator preparation in California. Important progress was made by the Commission, the Committee on Accreditation (COA), and the Commission staff with respect to beginning the implementation of the revised accreditation system. The accreditation system is…

This reports examines the Fall 2017 early reading performance of students who attended the Austin Independent School District's English learner summer school program in June 2017.

This "Equity by Design" brief highlights one promising means of diversifying the special education teacher workforce while advancing equity for communities of Color through alternative certification routes (ACRs) called Grow Your Own (GYO) teacher preparation programs. The authors begin by providing background on the teacher and student…

A partnership between a local school district and a university's education college has created an innovative program that provides learning opportunities at all levels each summer. Entering its eighth year, the program brings together middle school students, pre-service teachers, classroom teachers, and university graduate students and faculty for…

Between 2015 and 2019, Holyoke Public Schools in Massachusetts cut its dropout rate nearly in half and increased its graduation rate by 10 percentage points, with notable gains among historically marginalized student groups. The district cites Opportunity Academy (OA), an alternative education program within the district's high school, as a key…

Believe and Prepare is a teacher preparation reform implemented by the Louisiana Department of Education in collaboration with school systems and teacher preparation programs across the state. It was piloted in the 2014/15 school year and became mandatory in July 2018 for incoming teacher candidates in all 18 institutions of higher education that…

This article describes an infant and early childhood mental health-informed therapeutic visitation program that offers clinical support, systems-level advocacy, and developmentally appropriate guidance to families navigating the child welfare and family court systems. The program offers treatment, permanency, and placement planning for infants,…

In their recent review of special educational needs in schools, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF, 2020) highlights the fact that teaching strategies that are known to work well for mainstream learners are also likely to be effective for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). In this article, the authors explain how…

This communication reports the curriculum changes and how they worked when an upper-level experimental physical chemistry course had to switch from face-to-face to online teaching within a matter of days. Although several of the learning goals of the laboratory-based course could still be met in the online environment, others required…