More states are thinking about their data systems and how to give decision-makers the information they need. As states work to create successful education and career pathways, they need transparent, well-structured and well-governed data systems. To learn more, our team conducted a 50-State Comparison on state longitudinal data systems to collect…

The 2022-2023 Indiana Assessments Policy Manual serves as the foundation for established guidelines regarding appropriate test administration in Indiana for key stakeholders including educators and Test Coordinators. The following document contains policy guidance and contains appendices which pertain to specific aspects of test implementation,…

Research has demonstrated the wide-ranging and positive benefits from high-quality publicly-funded prekindergarten education. Yet, access for families with young children remains uneven, with significant gaps across geography, income, race, and ethnicity. Over the last few decades, many states have worked to broaden access to prekindergarten…

In this chapter, we explore statewide tuition-free college programs which encourage students to earn Career and Technical Education (CTE) credentials. To map the current landscape of statewide Promise programs, we conducted a policy discourse analysis of all statewide Promise programs while focusing on policy features relevant to workforce…

Utah Leading through Effective, Actionable, and Dynamic (ULEAD) Education is required to report on successful K-12 practices in Utah and other states and propose policy changes to remove barriers to implementation successful practices. Notably, successful and innovative practices across topic areas rely on additional staff expertise and time,…

The job of the school principal has become much more complex and demanding over the past several decades. Many university-based principal preparation programs--which prepare the majority of school principals--have struggled with how to make the fundamental changes needed to prepare principals for today's schools. To test a path forward, The…

In Washington state, the Working Connections subsidized child care program, along with the Seasonal Child Care and Child Welfare Child Care programs, supports children from low-income households, fostering their early learning and development while enabling families to maintain employment. Within these programs it is important to monitor patterns…

Utah Leading through Effective, Actionable, and Dynamic (ULEAD) Education is required to report on successful K-12 practices in Utah and other states and propose policy changes to remove barriers to implementation successful practices. These practices should result from ULEAD's innovative research reports and repository development. There have…

How are teacher pension benefits funded? Under traditional plans, the full cost of career teachers' benefits far exceeds the contributions designated for them. The gap between the two has three pieces, which may (with some license) be mnemonically tagged the three R's of pension funding: "redistribution," "return," and…

States have adopted a variety of policies to encourage universities to expand research production, with the hope of supporting economic growth and competitiveness. This paper considers whether a state-level initiative succeeded in influencing university-based research outputs among regional public universities. We test whether the Texas Research…

Recent research highlights teachers' key role as language policy interpreters, yet few studies have explored whether and how teachers learn about policy interpretation. This article explores how language policy interpretation is addressed within a statewide teacher education initiative in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Since 2012, the state has…

By the time Donald J. Trump was running for president in 2024, he had landed on a clear vision for the federal government's role in education. In short, he had concluded that the federal government's power over education should be relinquished to states, local communities, and, most importantly, families. Early into his second term, Trump has…

The Kalamazoo Promise (KPromise) is amongst the most well-known and generous tuition-free policies. This study advances the understanding of Promise student performance and persistence. We used a weighted-least square means and variance adjusted (WLSMV) SEM approach and k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) to deal with missing data. The main model suggested…

In 2015, Tennessee launched Tennessee Promise (TN Promise), one of the most comprehensive and well-funded statewide free-college scholarship programs in the country. To support TN Promise students, and especially those from the lowest-income households, tnAchieves, a key partner facilitating all non-financial components of TN Promise, implemented…

The purpose of this case study is to understand higher education administrators' perceptions of New York State's tuition-free initiative, the Excelsior Scholarship. A comprehensive literature review offers insights into a select history of higher education policy, as well as the current condition of public higher education. Guided by a…