Over the past two decades, community organizing has emerged as an effective force for school improvement. In the context of shrinking education funding, stubborn opportunity and achievement gaps between low-income and wealthy children and between children of color and White children, and polarizing debate on school reform, community organizing…

The Federal Pell Grant Program, which provides need-based grants to millions of college students, is the federal government's largest education expenditure. It consumes over half the Department of Education's annual budget and in 2010-2011 cost taxpayers about $36 billion per year. Although the program started out as a way to provide college…

This study looks at attendance in the early grades of elementary school. In particular, the authors focus on students enrolled in Pre-Kindergarten (PreK) and Kindergarten (K). They follow these young students over several years to determine their pattern of chronic absence (CA), defined as missing more than one-ninth of days enrolled, and their…

The Lifelong Learning Imperative (LLI) project was initiated to assess current practices in lifelong learning for engineering professionals, reexamine the underlying assumptions behind those practices, and outline strategies for addressing unmet needs. The LLI project brought together leaders of U.S. industry, academia, government, and…

Schools and educators have been increasingly educating students with disabilities in the general education setting; while at the same time the level of accountability for making a positive outcome on high stakes assessments for all students has increased. As educators feel pressure for their students to perform well on state assessments and meet…

On August 8-12, 2010 the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), convened the Colloquy on Minority Males in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), following the release of several reports highlighting the educational challenges facing minority males. The NSF recognized the…

Suicide is a serious public health problem that causes immeasurable pain, suffering, and loss to individuals, families, and communities nationwide. Many people may be surprised to learn that suicide was one of the top 10 causes of death in the United States in 2009. And death is only the tip of the iceberg. For every person who dies by suicide,…

Across the United States, student achievement is a concern. The local district under study is not meeting adequate yearly progress (AYP), a standard initiated by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which schools are expected to attain to avoid sanctions. The district's students are performing lower than state average on the state's standardized…

The U.S. Department of Education's Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) is one of the Obama administration's major antipoverty initiatives and a core strategy of the White House's Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. It is intended to improve educational outcomes by creating a continuum of school readiness, academic services, and family and…

National policy affects local practice in a variety of ways and through a variety of mechanisms. In this article, the authors examine what has been learned from Individuals With Disabilities Education Act's (IDEA) two early childhood (EC) programs about the power and limitations of policy as a lever to improve the lives of young children.…

In this report the authors use key outcome measures to summarize student performance within each higher education system; describe the degree of progress derived from system-level initiatives; and offer recommendations to address impediments and reduce demographic disparities. This report is a starting point for determining how everyone can…

The Study of School Turnaround is an examination of the implementation of School Improvement Grants (SIG) authorized under Title I section 1003(g) of the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" and supplemented by the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009." "Baseline Analyses of SIG Applications and SIG-Eligible…

The Social Security Administration is funding a random assignment evaluation of six demonstration projects to improve employment and other outcomes for youth ages 14 to 25 who are either receiving disability benefits or are at high risk of receiving them in the future. This report reviews the Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) projects, located…

President Obama's Educate to Innovate initiative has provided billions in additional federal funding for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education programs across the country. The Administration's recognition of the importance of STEM education-- for global competitiveness as well as for national security--is good and…

The state's Race to the Top (RTT) application requires changes to the state's evaluation/accountability system. It requires a teacher effectiveness measure, district effectiveness measure, leader effectiveness measure. Regarding the teacher effectiveness measure, RTT requires linking the data of individual students to individual teachers as part…