In the 20 years since the implementation of the Work Investment Act (WIA), federal funding for adult literacy education has remained largely stagnant, and actually decreased in inflation-adjusted dollars from FY2001-FY2019, despite the fact that the field serves fewer than 5% of those in need. Yet over these two decades, the field has moved away…

Agran and colleagues have not only summarized the research on inclusive education, but they have also summed up the frustrations of many of us who have been working with families, teachers, and administrators to facilitate the inclusion of children and young adults with severe disabilities over many years. My response takes some of their most…

In 2014, the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) thrust adult educators into a dramatically new landscape of service expectations and partnership requirements to increase the ability of providers to meet the employment needs of students and employers. The coronavirus pandemic created an accelerating demand for adult education…

State assessment leaders are concerned about the challenges with receiving full approval from the U.S. Department of Education (USED) when using the ACT or the SAT as their assessment of high school achievement. USED has asked states opting to use the ACT or the SAT as the achievement indicator under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to…

This guide describes key steps for developing a well-thought-out plan for evaluating a State Systemic Improvement Plan (SSIP). The guide provides considerations for how to incorporate each step into an evaluation plan, as well as a series of worksheets that correspond to each step and can be used to facilitate the planning process. The guide,…

Building on the Center for American Progress' workforce equity framework, which proposes creating and filling quality jobs with career options for all workers, this report proposes changing workforce accountability standards in order to drive labor markets toward quality job creation. It argues for restructuring workforce accountability from its…

This report is provided to the Education Interim Committee to report on the Educational Improvement Opportunities Outside of the Regular School Day Grant Program specified in Utah Code 53F-5-210. This program is also called the Program Quality Enhancement (PQE) grant program as it seeks to improve the quality of existing programs. This report…

This brief provides a summary of Tier 3 or "promising" evidence of Istation's Early Reading program in improving K-3 student performance in reading and English language arts (ELA). This quasi-experimental study examined whether students who attended schools that piloted Istation's Early Reading program during the 2017-18 school year had…

The Annual Condition of Secondary Career and Technical Education Report provides information on student enrollment in career and technical education courses and programs during academic years 2015 through 2019. Demographic characteristics of secondary career and technical education students and educators and information on career and technical…

Restraint and seclusion are two crisis intervention practices that educators employ to manage students who display escalated behavior. These procedures, however, are high-risk, intensive practices that have resulted in psychological trauma, physical injury, and even death. While there are no federal laws in place on this topic, the U.S. Department…

Enactment of the "Rehabilitation Act of 1973" and the "Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990" expanded and clarified the rights of students with disabilities in higher education (Connor, 2011; Pena, 2014; Troiano, 2003). In the past three decades, the enrollment rate of students with learning disabilities (LD) in higher…

Our nation spends approximately $650 billion per year on our K-12 education system. To understand how those dollars impact students, we need to examine spending where it reaches them: at the school level. The document, developed by the National Center, describes a national data archive that uses all elements of Interstate Financial Reporting (IFR)…

This qualitative study examines how six Adult Basic Education (ABE) students perceived success in their personal and academic lives. Policy discourses concerning ABE learners offer perspectives on success, and these discourses influence, correspond with, and contradict learners' discourses on success in various ways. However, the organizational…

The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) grants states unprecedented discretion in implementing many of the federal law's requirements concerning the needs of the nation's educationally disadvantaged students. This theoretical paper addresses a void in the policy implementation literature on why ESEA reform efforts have not been more…

The New Mexico Public Education Department's (NMPED) mission is to ensure all students in New Mexico receive the education they deserve and that students are prepared for college, careers, and lifelong learning. To do this, the department is focusing on supports, sustained learning and outreach to districts, charter schools, tribal education…