Civil Society;Education and Literacy;Race and Ethnicity
California has had serious issues of separation and discrimination in its schools since it became a state. It was little affected by the Brown decision, which was directed primarily at the 17 states that had laws mandating the segregation of African Americans.
Although the California Supreme Court recognized a broad desegregation right in the state constitution, and the legislature briefly mandated that school boards take action to enforce this right, both were reversed by voter-approved propositions. The 1979 Proposition One led to the termination of the city's desegregation plan -- the first major city in the U.S. to end its plan. U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1990s led eventually to the termination of the federal desegregation orders in San Francisco and San Jose. Major court decisions in California mandating desegregation that occurred in the 1970s were overturned by the 1990s, thus California presently has no school integration policy.
Segregation has grown substantially in the past two decades, especially for Latinos. White students' contact with nonwhite and poor students has increased significantly because of the dramatic change in overall population. Black and Latino students are strongly concentrated in schools that have far lower quality, according to state Academic Performance Index (API) ratings. Conversely, a far larger share of whites and Asians attend the most highly related schools and thus are the most prepared for college. A half-century of desegregation research shows the major costs of segregation and the variety of benefits of schools that are attended by all races.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Western) / California
Computers and Technology, Education and Literacy
Blending computer-based and teacher-led instruction promises to help schools meet students' individual needs by organizing and prioritizing staff and technology in more productive ways. However, this fiscal analysis of eight new charter schools that implemented personalized learning this year finds that early difficulty in forecasting enrollment and revenue can undermine implementation of the model.
As a result of missed enrollment and revenue projections:
- The schools spent less on technology and more on personnel than planned: instead of a combined $1.7 million on technology in the early stages, they spent just $650,000
- Student-to-computer ratios were higher and schools spent less than planned on instructional and performance reporting software.
- Projected budget deficits in five of the schools threaten their ability to sustain on public funding.
Among the brief's recommendations for those hoping to implement personalized-learning models in the future:
- Invest in student recruitment efforts up front to ensure enrollment targets are met.
- Develop a 'worst-case scenario' budget where fundraising and enrollment estimates fall 20 -- 25 percent below target.
- Manage contracts proactively: be explicit about needs, establish performance requirements, and negotiate trial periods to make sure products meet the school's needs.
The eight personalized-learning schools included in this analysis were chosen to receive Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) competitive start-up grants. CRPE is midway through a study of twenty personalized-learning schools that received NGLC grants. The study examines how the schools allocate their resources, how they manage the new costs of technology, and whether they can become financially sustainable on public revenues. CRPE will continue to track spending in all twenty schools this year and publish its findings next spring.
This study is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Education and Literacy;Race and Ethnicity
Low rates of access and success in post-secondary education are arguably the single biggest challenge facing South Africa's public education system. The sustem is failing to meet the educational needs of young people, a growing economy, and a rapidly changing society. Black students, particularly those from poor backgrounds are deeply affected. Senior managers, 30 in all, at 18 of the country's 23 public universities were interviewed to understand issues such as primary academic interventions designed to support and improve student success. The authors conclude that no single intervention is likely to shift student performance and success. The answer, however, will require "understanding the holistic needs of students." The authors also feel it is crucial that the imporatnce of teaching and learning - as well as research- be understood.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: Africa (Southern) / South Africa
Until recently, teacher quality was largely seen as a constant among education's sea of variables. Policy efforts to increase teacher quality emphasized the field as a whole instead of the individual: for instance, increased regulation, additional credentials, or a profession modeled after medicine and law. Even as research emerged showing how the quality of each classroom teacher was crucial to student achievement, much of the debate in American public education focused on everything except teacher quality. School systems treated one teacher much like any other, as long as they
had the right credentials. Policy, too, treated teachers as if they were interchangeable parts, or "widgets."
The perception of teachers as widgets began to change in the late 1990s and early aughts as new organizations launched and policymakers and philanthropists began to concentrate on teacher effectiveness. Under the Obama administration, the pace of change quickened. Two ideas, bolstered by research, animated the policy community:
1) Teachers are the single most important in-school factor for student learning.
2) Traditional methods of measuring teacher quality have little to no bearing on actual student learning.
Using new data and research, school districts, states, and the federal government sought to change how teachers are trained, hired, staffed in schools, evaluated, and compensated. The result was an unprecedented amount of policy change that has, at once, driven noteworthy progress, revealed new problems to policymakers, and created problems of its own. Between 2009 and 2013, the number of states that require annual evaluations for all teachers increased from 15 to 28. The number of states that require teacher evaluations to include objective measures of student achievement nearly tripled, from 15 to 41; and the number of states that require student growth to be the preponderant criteria increased fivefold, from 4 to 20
This paper takes a look at where the country has been with regards to teacher effectiveness over the last decade, and outlines policy suggestions for the future.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Education and Literacy;Race and Ethnicity
The Great Recession has been hard on recent college graduates, but it has been even harder for black recent college graduates. This report examines the labor-market outcomes of black recent college graduates using the general approach developed by Federal Reserve Bank of New York researchers Jaison Abel, Richard Deitz, and Yaqin Su (2014), who recently studied the outcomes of all recent college graduates.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States
Productivity is clearly a priority in state education agencies (SEA). The first two volumes of The SEA of the Future made the case for a "productivity mindset" in our country's state education agencies. Authors in these volumes argued that SEAs must fight against focusing exclusively on regulatory compliance to find more ways to provide local autonomy and consistently measure, assess, and hold themselves, their districts, and schools accountable for both performance and costs. Though these essays sharply challenged the traditional work of SEAs, state leaders responded enthusiastically, saying, "Yes. Where do we start?"
In this third volume of the series, we introduce the "productivity infrastructure." The productivity infrastructure constitutes the building blocks for an SEA committed to supporting productivity, innovation, and performance -- from the state chief to the classroom. These building blocks include:
* Policies to expand the flexibility of district and school leaders and allow them to make choices about resource use.
* State funding arrangements that fund students, not programs.
* Information systems that allow district and school leaders to accurately assess the productivity of policies and practices.
The essays in this volume offer a rich discussion of each of these elements.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Education and Literacy;Parenting and Families;Poverty
In an effort to improve family economic security in rural communities, Southern Bancorp Community Partners (SBCP) sought a sustainable funding source in 2013 for Arkansas's Aspiring Scholars Matching Grant (ASMG) Program, a savings incentive for low-to-moderate income families that matches funds saved for a child's college education in the 529 GIFT Plan, and investigated the possible creation of a matched 529 savings program in Mississippi. SBCP authored this paper to illustrate and examine the current options of college savings accounts offered in both states and analyze the causes behind low participation in each state's 529 plans.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Southern) / Arkansas;North America / United States (Southern) / Mississippi
In culling lessons from 13 years of research that describes what effective principals do well, The Wallace Foundation has found they perform five key practices:
* Shaping a vision of academic success for all students
* Creating a climate hospitable to education
* Cultivating leadership in others
* Improving instruction
* Managing people, data, and processes to foster school improvement
Learning Forward has developed this web-based professional learning guide using excerpts from the award-winning PBS documentary film, The Principal Story, to illustrate the five practices. The guide is intended to help those who prepare and support aspiring and current principals probe these essential practices. Use this facilitator guide to explore options for using these tools.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
