Higher education institutions must prepare students for success in the dynamic knowledge economy by providing a high-quality educational experience. As the world and our understanding of learning processes continually evolve, educators face the challenge of developing innovative strategies to engage and motivate students in their own learning.…

State summative assessments play an important role in measuring student learning and guiding educational improvement efforts, despite their limitations. But there is growing momentum in individual states and nationally to rethink these assessments with an eye toward reducing time spent on testing and increasing the tests' instructional relevance.…

STEAM education can be described in two ways. One model emphasizes the arts and is not as concerned about the accuracy of the STEM fields. In the second model, STEM content is the prevailing force with a focus on accuracy, and the arts are used in limited and secondary resources for the teaching of the content. However, in order to promote…

Oftentimes, policymakers discuss school reform only in terms of its benefits to students. In this brief, researcher Bartley R. Danielsen identifies how more multifaceted reforms can not only improve educational outcomes for students but also revitalize communities by encouraging wealthy families to remain in lower-income areas, thereby raising…

The changing demands of the 21st century--and the students growing up in it--are generating fundamental challenges to historical assumptions about what education looks like. The challenge today is to provide a deeper level of personalized learning to each and every student so that all can achieve mastery of the Common Core standards and other…

"The Practice Base for How We Learn: Supporting Students' Social, Emotional, and Academic Development" outlines promising practices that show how students, teachers, parents, and administrators can integrate social, emotional, and academic learning in preK-12 education. The report, which represents the vision of the 34-member Council of…

There is a widespread consensus among practitioners, researchers, and policy makers that current teacher evaluation systems in most school districts do little to help teachers improve or to support personnel decision making. For this reason, new approaches to teacher evaluation are being developed and tested. There is also a growing consensus that…

The reauthorization of the U.S. Elementary and Secondary Education Act, referred to as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), emphasizes evidence-based initiatives while providing new flexibilities to states and districts with regard to the use of federal funds, including funds to promote effective school leadership. In response, state and…

The May 2012 State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) report, "The Broadband Imperative: Recommendations to Address K-12 Education Infrastructure Needs," pushed educators and policy makers nationwide to increase high-speed broadband access in schools, with specific recommendations regarding access, funding, and policies…

Planning for policy implementation is as important as the implementation itself. A policy's intent can be subverted by the way the policy is implemented, or when unanticipated outcomes take precedence over the true intent. This article presents three cases of specific instances of unintended outcomes from policy implementation and presents a…

The purpose of this research to investigate the heterogeneity of per-pupil expenditure (PPE) slope estimates in predicting student achievement. The research question guiding this project is: how does the measured relationship between per-pupil expenditure vary across studies that use different models? In concert with SREE's 2012 conference mission…

There is currently a rapidly growing interest in inquiry learning and an emerging consensus among researchers that, particularly when supported by technology, it can be a significant vehicle for developing higher order thinking skills. Inquiry learning methods also offer learners meaningful and productive approaches to the development of their…

One objective of the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) School Improvement Grants (SIG) and Race to the Top (RTT) program is to help states enhance their capacity to support the turnaround of low-performing schools. This capacity may be important, given how difficult it is to produce substantial and sustained achievement gains in low-performing…

This book should be read by anyone concerned about the future of education in the United States. It was written for students, parents, educators, administrators, and policy makers because it will require effort from all these individuals to create meaningful change in the education system. This book discusses why the education system needs to…

Federal education policy will soon undergo a major revision, with significant consequences for the state's own policy and practices. This report seeks to help federal and state policymakers consider this restructuring and one of its core questions: How should schools and school districts be held accountable for the academic progress of their…