In 2019, the Texas legislature passed a historic education finance bill that included an initiative to add up to 30 days to the school-year calendar. One way districts can do this is to offer a voluntary summer learning program. In 2020, the American Institutes for Research, with support from The Wallace Foundation, launched the six-year Texas…

Teacher professional development (PD) is among the most prominent levers used to improve teaching quality. The findings of research studies examining PD interventions are heterogeneous, with meta-analyses indicating mean positive impacts but also the existence of many ineffective programs. "Educational Researcher" has served as a…

Research on Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers (TOCIT) has gained traction in recent years in educational scholarship. Yet very few studies have evaluated teacher education programs that prepare TOCIT within the U.S. context or have focused on the promising pedagogical practices used to prepare TOCIT. The challenge of doing program…

State financial aid is a critical piece of college affordability for students from low-income backgrounds. Nearly three quarters of all students attend college in their home state - which is typically a requirement for state-based financial aid - and first-generation and students from low-income backgrounds are even more likely than their peers to…

The National Academy of Education (NAEd) undertook this consensus report on the evaluation and improvement of teacher preparation programs (TPPs). Specifically, this consensus report aims to (1) identify and disseminate best practices for evaluating and improving TPPs to promote teacher effectiveness and student achievement; (2) provide…

This report analyzes the design process that campus teams use to create sustained professional development (SPD) programs such as faculty learning communities for VITAL faculty. The authors begin with a description of the larger research project that this report contributes to, including an overview of earlier research and methodology for the…

Among the 50 states, 44 use free and reduced-price lunch enrollment to identify low-income students. These data are also commonly used to allocate federal, state, and local funding to schools serving low-income children. School and district poverty rates, as determined by free and reduced-price lunch enrollment, additionally feature prominently in…

In 2008, Maine implemented the Educational Opportunity Tax Credit (EOTC), a tax credit that repays up to $4,400 of student loan debt to filers who live in Maine, work in Maine, are paying towards their student debt, and who have an eligible degree. In 2019, Maine Revenue Services (MRS) provided 14,341 EOTC tax credits to 19,798 people, with annual…

To identify the state-level policies and policy domains that state policymakers and advocates perceive as most important for positively impacting the use of children's mental health services (CMHS). We used a modified Delphi technique (i.e., two rounds of questionnaires and an interview) during Spring 2021 to elicit perceptions among state mental…

Recent teacher supervision and evaluation system (TSES) reform efforts have resulted in wide adoption of policies targeting improvements in teaching quality and student outcomes; however, impact of these policies has been inconsistent (Hazi, 2019; Stecher et al., 2018). Failure of TSES efforts to realize their intended outcomes is the result of…

During the global pandemic of the 2020-21 school year, school districts rapidly transitioned from the traditional in-person structure of school to distance learning. This research study sought to understand how superintendents envisioned virtual learning as an option within their school district portfolio, exploring the barriers faced in its…

Interested in managing existing work-based learning schemes by incorporating monitoring and evaluation methods? Following a brief discussion of the concept of work-based learning, this handbook presents the rationale for monitoring and evaluation as part of good governance. The functioning of work-based learning schemes is represented by a process…

The purpose of this article is to describe the efforts of three Latin American countries (Chile, Colombia, and Dominican Republic) to develop their own early childhood teacher preparation standards. The authors explain the demographic and historical environmental conditions, the sociopolitical climate that gave impetus to the development of the…

A customized guide about liberatory design thinking processes that have been tested within college settings to support changes that enhance equity in policies and practices within institutions. This research is based on case studies of several institutions, including focus group interviews with the campus design teams and an analysis of artifacts.…

This paper describes a collaborative design for the Finnish Teacher Education Development Programme in a decentralized education system where teachers, schools, municipalities and universities have high autonomy. The development programme was designed by 70 experts from the universities and stakeholders. The research outcomes related to teacher…