Veterans are the unacknowledged permanent ambassadors of national service. How veterans are publicly portrayed directly relates to how society conceptualizes military service, including what happens to an individual during that service. In an all-volunteer force, reputation is key to the attractiveness of joining a profession that can end in death…

Digital knowledge and skills are needed to fully participate in the society and economy of the United States. The historic $65 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act represents a significant federal investment in advancing digital equity and inclusion, and an opportunity to make lasting change in communities across the country. This report…

This brief report summarizes the requirements for undocumented immigrants set forth by the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S.744). Assuming that S.744 will move forward in Congress, the report also examines issues having to do with certain language, civics and government, and education/training provisions…

This paper examines the U.S. social insurance system, which we define broadly to include both programs supported by dedicated taxes and other federal programs that provide income support, assistance in meeting basic needs, or services to improve economic opportunity. The paper considers the social insurance system as a whole as well as its…

The increasing number of undocumented immigrants coming to the United States has created serious socioeconomic, sociocultural, and socioeducational challenges for the communities in which these immigrants settle. Minors represent over 1.3 million of the 10.8 million unauthorized immigrants presently living in the United States. Given the secretive…

Even as the Obama administration tries to make good on promises of unprecedented transparency and accountability in economic-stimulus funding, the first reports from states and school districts show the difficulty of figuring out--in detail--how the money for education has been spent. In the broadest sense, the quarterly stimulus reports made…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is launching a new series of Technical Briefs on various aspects of the protection of personally identifiable information in students' education records. While driven by recent events, the principles and practices that are outlined in this series can be applied more generally to personally…

The 21st Century School Fund, through its Building Educational Success Together (BEST) collaborative, is tracking the effect of federal stimulus funding on the condition of PK-12 public school facilities and whether or not the distribution of ARRA funding related to public school facilities is helping reduce the disparity of capital expenditures…

This article reviews current planning efforts regarding the use of 2009 federal stimulus dollars in higher education and focuses on identifying best practices. It takes the approach that "best practice" should be defined by criteria outside current planning efforts and suggests that desired outcome, process, and maintenance of key relationships…

The American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Mathematica Policy Research (MPR) developed this guide to help you consider evaluation issues likely to arise as you launch ARRA-funded initiatives and other educational reform activities. Many states are already involved in evaluation, so many of the ideas presented here may be familiar. The authors…

Faced with their first reporting deadlines for economic-stimulus aid to education, school districts are toiling over how every stimulus penny has been spent so far and how many jobs have been saved--numbers that will be scrutinized not just by the public, but by government auditors as well. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed by…

The eight-year-old No Child Left Behind Act established for the first time a federal benchmark for student achievement. When the Obama Administration took office, the new president promised to stay true to the goal of NCLB while upgrading what critics have termed simplistic, "fill in a bubble" testing to create a more comprehensive…

If the competition for a slice of $4 billion in federal Race to the Top Fund money were a school class, Colorado would be one of the kids sitting up front, furiously taking notes, and leaping up to answer every one of the teacher's questions. Officials here began plotting their strategy for receiving one of the coveted grants nearly as soon as the…

This publication provides a compilation of the issues affecting postsecondary education in America. The contents of this issue include: (1) Overview of Economic and Fiscal Dynamics; (2) Global and Domestic Growth Prospects; (3) Snapshot of Economic Indicators--November 2010; (4) Labor Market Conditions and Post-Recession Economic Impacts; (5)…

After 39 applicants went home losers from the first round of the Race to the Top competition, many states regrouped and raised the stakes for round two--changing laws to revamp teacher evaluations, drumming up more support from districts and teachers' unions, and getting more aggressive about turning around low-performing schools. The authors…