Educational reform in the United States is perpetually evolving. Much of the recent reforms have concentrated on high-stakes testing and assessment, but a parallel effort has been emerging in the field of vocational and career education. Prompted partly by federal legislation--most recently by the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act…

"Kids' Share 2013: Federal Expenditures on Children in 2012 and Future Projections," a seventh annual report, looks comprehensively at federal spending and taxes on children. Federal outlays on children fell by 7 percent between 2011 and 2012, which is the greatest single-year drop since the early 1980s. While most of this decline is…

The Federal Pell Grant Program is the nation's largest need-based grant program. While students' initial eligibility for the Pell is based on financial need, renewal of the award is contingent on their making satisfactory academic progress (SAP)--meeting minimum academic standards similar to those proposed in models of performance-based…

This latest brief updates education leaders on the key policies the 13 (Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia) Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states plan to implement under federal waivers to No Child Left Behind. It details,…

Head Start is a federal program that has provided comprehensive early childhood development services to low-income children and their families since 1965. The comprehensive nature of the program includes educational, health, nutritional, and social services. These services are intended to prepare children to enter kindergarten and to improve the…

In this testimony, Patricia K. Whitefoot talks on behalf of the National Indian Education Association with regard to the President Obama's Fiscal Year 2011 budget request. She notes that Native education still faces enormous challenges, including severe underfunding. Far too many students and schools continue to experience abject failure. Under…

Recently growth-based approaches to accountability have received considerable attention because they have the potential to reward schools and teachers for improving student performance over time by measuring the progress of students at all levels of the performance spectrum (including those who have not yet reached proficiency on state…

Rural, middle schools in North Carolina have struggled with the Students with Disabilities subgroup in making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in reading since No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was passed. Consequences could be dire for a school and principal with a subgroup of these children who were unable to show growth each year toward total…

In today's educational realm principals face high demands to increase student achievement and the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has intensified this challenging job with its requirements to adequate yearly progress (AYP). Such mandates have caused many elementary school principals to consider distributed leadership as a catalyst…

Drawing on data from state departments of education and other public sources, this report estimates the number and percentage of public schools that did not make adequate yearly progress. The report finds that approximately one-third of the nation's public schools did not make AYP in school year 2008-09, although the number varied greatly by…

The purpose of this study was to explore the role of Student Support Services (SSS) in encouraging student involvement and its impact on student perceptions and academic experiences in three technical colleges in upstate South Carolina. By examining Alexander Astin's theory of student involvement in the services provided by the program, a better…

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, a significant amount of funding has been targeted to improve state and local education systems. The Race to the Top Fund in particular is providing $4.35 billion in competitive grants for states. The U.S. Department of Education designated two phases for the Race to the Top grant…

This project assesses the feasibility of creating a voluntary, nationwide data dictionary that can be used to standardize the reporting of postsecondary accountability reporting requirements for the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 (otherwise known as Perkins IV). Variables, field codes, and programming instructions,…

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a Census Bureau program that provides annually updated information on demographic, social, economic, and housing characteristics of U.S. households at every level of geography, from the nation to the neighborhood. ACS data are used by public and business decision-makers to more clearly identify issues and…

In recent years, public charter schools in Connecticut and around the United States have proven that students living in poverty are capable of high achievement. President Obama said in a July 2009 interview, "Charters, which are within the public school system, force the kind of experimentation and innovation that helps to drive excellence in…