Over the past half-century, billions of dollars have been spent across the nation on efforts to transform low-performing public schools -- most of them urban, most of them low-income, and most of them disproportionately enrolled with students of color -- into models of success. It hasn't worked. The failure of attempts to remedy the state of urban…

Because The Maine Community College System (MCCS) is aware of that fact that student veterans and those veterans seeking to enroll in college have specific needs, each of the colleges in the MCCS system is working to develop and strengthen target responses to meet those needs. The Maine Community College System is therefore providing this report…

Beginning in 2011, the Department of Education (Education) used its statutory authority to invite states to apply for waivers from certain provisions in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) through its Flexibility initiative. To receive Flexibility waivers, states had to agree to meet other requirements related to college- and…

In 2013, Governor Jerry Brown and the California legislature radically restructured the state's school funding system and accountability systems with a weighted student formula and a mandated local planning process in each district. The new law substitutes local politics and grassroots agency for state-driven mandates and compliance reviews. While…

The espoused foundation of U.S. society, "E pluribus unum" (out of many, one), is based on the belief that this nation should simultaneously support pluralism and promote unity. The road to making this ideal a reality, however, has not always been smooth. The ever-widening achievement gap highlights how this discordance plays out in our…

For months, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been debated throughout the media, legislatures, education organizations, and households across the country. Education groups have released statements both in favor of the standards and opposed. As these arguments are being tossed around, 44 states and D.C. are implementing CCSS and other…

Rising college costs are of increasing concern. At the 12 public universities in Illinois, average increases in tuition were modest, generally in the 4% range, until 1999 when individual campuses begin to increase tuition at double digit rates. In 2002-2003, the overall average increase in tuition/fees more than doubled at 13.79%. In an effort to…

This article offers an analysis of the origins, evolution, and impact of the Obama administration's Race to the Top (RTTT) competitive grant program and places it in the broader context of the debate over the No Child Left Behind Act and the shifting intergovernmental relations around education. RTTT is fundamentally about two things: creating…

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provided $9 billion in education benefits to service-members and veterans in fiscal year 2010, mostly through the new Post-9/11 GI Bill. In providing education benefits, VA relies on State Approving Agencies (SAA) to approve schools; and on schools to report students' enrollment status. US Government…

This first of two reports presents early findings from the National Evaluation of the Comprehensive Technical Assistance Centers (Comprehensive Centers), a federally funded program that provides technical assistance to states in connection with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. The law authorizing the Comprehensive Centers, the…

The federal government has had a long-standing commitment to ensuring access of English Learner (EL) students to a meaningful education. As early as 1968, the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" ("ESEA") contained provisions for supporting the education of EL students and in its 1974 landmark decision, "Lau v.…

Response to Intervention (RTI) is a school-wide, integrative approach to instruction and intervention that provides a continuum of services to all students, both within general and special education. Further, RTI focuses on the frequent monitoring of student progress using formative and summative assessments, and providing students with…

This report analyzes the experiences of 27 states selected to participate in Carnegie Corporation of New York's Middle Grade School State Policy Initiative (MGSSPI), a 3-year grant program to states to stimulate fundamental reform in schools serving 10- to 15-year old students. MGSSPI states are working to radically transform the education…

Statewide finance reform offers a one-time opportunity for overhauling services. Any funding remedy should address improved base funding for low-income schools and investment in programs and practices designed to help schools increase student performance. This article describes a mechanism for using new monies to disseminate effective programs,…

This paper presents an overall approach, statistical techniques, and a public-use database that can be used for understanding state welfare policies and measuring their relationship with key outcomes of interest, all while learning helpful statistical techniques. We use descriptive statistics and correlations to describe state policies. We find…