In 2010, TFA launched a major expansion effort, funded in part by a five-year Investing in Innovation (i3) scale-up grant of $50 million from the U.S. Department of Education. By the 2012 -- 2013 school year -- the second year of the scale-up -- TFA had expanded its placements of first- and second-year corps members by 25 percent. This study examines the effectiveness of TFA elementary school teachers hired during the first two years of the i3 scale-up, relative to other teachers in the same grades and school.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Acknowledging that national borders need not constrain our thinking, we have examined a selection of alternative academic cultures and, in some cases, specific schools, in search of solutions to common challenges we face when we consider reorganizing American schools. A wide range of interviews and e-mail exchanges with international researchers, government officials and school principals has informed this research, which was supplemented with a literature review scanning international reports and journal articles. Providing a comprehensive global inventory of competency-based education is not within the scope of this study, but we are confident that this is a representative sampling.
The report that follows first reviews the definition of competency-based learning. A brief lesson in the international vocabulary of competency education is followed by a review of global trends that complement our own efforts to improve performance and increase equitable outcomes. Next, we share an overview of competency education against a backdrop of global education trends (as seen in the international PISA exams), before embarking on an abbreviated world tour. We pause in Finland, British Columbia (Canada), New Zealand and Scotland, with interludes in Sweden, England, Singapore and Shanghai, all of which have embraced practices that can inform the further development of competency education in the United States.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States, North America-Canada (Western)-British Columbia, Europe (Western)-England, Europe (Western) - Scotland, Europe (Scandinavia)-Sweden, Europe (Northern)-Finland, Australia-New Zealand, Asia (Eastern)-China-Shanghai, Asia (Southeastern)-Singapore
CRPE commissioned Dr. Marcus Winters to analyze the factors driving the special education gap between Denver's charter and traditional public elementary and middle schools.
Using student-level data, Winters shows that Denver's special education enrollment gap starts at roughly 2 percentage points in kindergarten and is more than triple that in eighth grade. However, it doesn't appear to be caused by charter schools pushing students out. Instead, the gap is mostly due to student preferences for different types of schools, how schools classify and declassify students, and the movement of students without disabilities across sectors.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Western)-Colorado-Denver County-Denver
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;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
Education and Literacy, Science, Women
If negative gender stereotypes around science didn't exist today, the world would benefit from 300,000 additional doctors in science annually, according to this report, which explores the vast underrepresentation of women in scientific professions. Data from 14 countries was compiled by the Boston Consulting Group to determine at which points in their educational and career paths women veer away from science.
August 1970
Geographic Focus:
Aging, Education and Literacy, Women
Now more than ever before, women around the world are poised to make significant progress. Large-scale changes in every region could lead to advances for women -- as well as progress for countries and entire regions -- if well leveraged by societies, governments, and businesses.
This report explores women's status through the lens of shifting demographics, improving education, and stalled progress toward equality for women.
August 1970
Geographic Focus:
