The COVID-19 pandemic has upended life for students, teachers and everyone connected to public schools. The crisis has also exposed the fragilities of the economy in meeting the basic needs of all and highlighted the importance of the public sector, of community, and of care work. Schools are key public spaces of community and care. They must be…

The COVID-19 health crisis has laid bare the structural inequity in the financial aid system. The pandemic has hit the lowest-income students hardest, with many struggling to afford the basic technology for online learning on top of new or exacerbated food and housing insecurity. Federal and state dollars predicated on Pell Grant eligibility, time…

Prior research suggests that partnerships in early care and education have the potential to enhance the quality of care and offer comprehensive services to more children and families. This brief draws on data from the national descriptive study of Early Head Start-Child Care (EHS-CC) Partnerships to describe the activities partnerships engage in…

The purpose of the United States Department of Education's (Department) fiscal year (FY) 2020 "Agency Financial Report" (AFR) is to inform Congress, the President, other external stakeholders, and the American people on how the Department used the federal resources entrusted to it to advance the mission of the Department to promote…

This biochemistry laboratory course was designed to provide significant learning experiences to expose students to different ways of succeeding as scientists in academia and foster development and improvement of their potential and competency as the next generation of investigators. To meet these goals, the laboratory course employs three…

This ethnography documents how the message of sustainability was interpreted and communicated through a sustainable agricultural (SAG) program at an American higher education institution. The ethnography documents the evolution of the program as the program tackled obstacles and accomplished its goals during the initial phases of the program's…

This case study outlines an appreciative inquiry approach to program reform using an agricultural teacher education program at a land-grant university that had begun to suffer from a large decline in student enrollment. Documents were analyzed that provided recommendations toward a master plan for reform made by 23 key agents based on their…

School reform and turnaround efforts have been in the public eye since the signing of the Elementary and Secondary Act (ESEA) into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965. Research has been focused on the School Improvement Grant, as well as the essential components that improve performance of schools. This qualitative case examines one…

As states begin to revisit or revise their accountability systems to include an additional indicator of school quality or success under the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the Center on Standards and Assessment Implementation (CSAI) has received queries regarding whether and how states are measuring school climate and stakeholder…

This issue of "Policy Insights" reviews the results of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education's (WICHE) annual survey of tuition and fees at public colleges and universities in the WICHE region and discusses related policy implications. Overall, tuition and fees in the WICHE region increased relatively little in 2015-16…

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) expects all Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grantees to conduct an evaluation of their programs. Experience with earlier rounds of TIF grants has shown that evaluations can provide valuable information for managing and improving TIF-supported activities, as well as evidence that these activities have had a…

This study compares tuition funding arrangements, debt at graduation, and earnings outcomes for full-time domestic undergraduates in eight Anglophone countries: the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland), United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. According to multiple estimates, the average English student faces…

The British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF) is pleased to have the opportunity to present its views on priorities for the 2017 provincial budget to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services (the Committee). The BCTF represents 41,000 members who are teachers and associated professionals in public schools across British…

This is the seventh in a series of hearings to inform this committee's reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. The focus of this hearing, teacher preparation, is profoundly important for all students, from the very youngest to adult students. Study after study shows that teacher quality is the decisive in-school factor in boosting student…

The national commitment to increasing postsecondary educational attainment, combined with growing economic anxiety, has made community colleges the focus of many federal and state policy initiatives. There is good reason for this: by virtue of their nature and reach, community colleges--public institutions of higher education that predominantly…