Education and Literacy;Parenting and Families
Between America's long-standing national objective of improving the strength of the public school system to prepare students for college and careers and the focus of the Obama administration on education as a pathway to economic security for the middle class and improving the economy, education issues and policy are in the spotlight. A central focus of the policy discussion is the measurement of quality and the utilization of quality data to improve student outcomes. This quality-focused policy agenda covers a range of high-profile issues, from standardized testing to teacher evaluation to early childhood education, and involves a range of stakeholders.
While regular survey research is conducted with a variety of stakeholders, including teachers, very few nationally representative surveys of parents have been conducted recently. Often cited as a key determinant of student outcomes, parents represent an important perspective that policymakers need to understand in the design, articulation, and implementation of quality-focused education initiatives.
This study provides a comprehensive description of parents' perspectives on education in America today, with a specific focus on understanding what quality education and teaching means to parents and how it should be measured and rewarded.
With funding from the Joyce Foundation, the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted a national survey of 1,025 parents or guardians of children who completed a grade between kindergarten and 12th during the 2012-2013 school year.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States
Children and Youth, Education and Literacy
This new report developed by FSG with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, distills a set of 48 early childhood indicators that reflect healthy development of young children. The report also highlights 10 emerging themes, areas that are not sufficiently addressed by existing indicators and where further inquiry is needed.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
The analysis here focuses on Boston's charter high schools. For the purpose of this report, an analysis of high schools is both a necessity and a virtue. It is necessary to study high schools because most students applying to charters in earlier grades are not yet old enough to generate data on postsecondary outcomes. Charter high schools are also of substantial policy interest: a growing body of research argues that high school may be too late for cost-effective human capital interventions. Indeed, impact analyses of interventions for urban youth have mostly generated disappointing results.
This report is interested in ascertaining whether charter schools, which in Massachusetts are largely budget-neutral, can have a substantial impact on the life course of affected students. The set of schools studied here comes from an earlier investigation of the effects of charter attendance in Boston on test scores.
The high schools from the earlier study, which enroll the bulk of charter high school students in Boston, generate statistically and socially significant gains on state assessments in the 10th grade. This report questions whether these gains are sustained.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Northeastern) / Massachusetts / Suffolk County / Boston
To help inform policymakers and the public about the progress of education in the United States, Congress has mandated that the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) produce an annual report, "The Condition of Education." This year's report presents 42 indicators of important developments and trends in U.S. education. These indicators focus on population characteristics, participation in education, elementary and secondary education, and postsecondary education.
As this year's Condition shows, in 2012, about 90 percent of young adults ages 25 to 29 had a high school diploma, or its equivalent, and 33 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher. As in previous years, annual median earnings in 2011 were higher for those with higher levels of education -- for example, 25- to 34-year-olds with a college degree earned over twice as much as high school dropouts.
In 2011, almost two-thirds of 3- to 5-year-olds were enrolled in preschool, and nearly 60 percent of these children were in full-day programs. At the elementary and secondary level, there were about 50 million public school students in 2011, a number that is expected to grow to 53 million in the next decade. Of these students, nearly 2 million attended charter schools. Postsecondary enrollment in 2011 was at 21 million students, including 18 million undergraduate and 3 million graduate students.
NCES's newest data on elementary and secondary schools show that about one in five public schools was considered high poverty in 2011 -- meaning that 75 percent or more of their enrolled students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch -- up from about to one in eight in 2000. In school year 2009 -- 10, some 3.1 million public high school students, or 78.2 percent, graduated on time with a regular diploma. And, in 2011, about 68 percent of recent high school completers were enrolled in college the following fall. Meanwhile, the status dropout rate, or the percentage of 16- to 24-year-olds who are not enrolled in school and do not have a high school diploma or its equivalent, declined from 12 percent in 1990 to 7 percent in 2011.
At 4-year colleges in 2011, nearly 90 percent of full-time students at public and private nonprofit institutions were under the age of 25. However, only about 29 percent of full-time students at private for-profit colleges were, while 39 percent were between the ages of 25 to 34 and another 32 percent were 35 and older. About 56 percent of male students and 61 percent of female students who began their bachelor's degree in the fall of 2005, and did not transfer, had completed their degree by 2011. In that year, there were 1.7 million bachelor's degrees and over 700,000 master's degrees awarded.
The Condition of Education 2013 includes the latest data available on these and more key indicators. As new data are released, the indicators will be updated and made available. Along with these indicators, NCES produces a wide range of reports and data to help inform policymakers and the American public about trends and conditions in U.S. education.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States
In recent years, 'continuous improvement' has become a popular catchphrase in the field of education. However, while continuous improvement has become commonplace and well-documented in other industries, such as healthcare and manufacturing, little is known about how this work has manifested itself in education.
This white paper attempts to map the landscape of this terrain by identifying and describing organizations engaged in continuous improvement, and by highlighting commonalities and differences among them. The findings classify three types of organizations engaged in continuous improvement: those focused on instructional improvement at the classroom level; those concentrating on system-wide improvement; and those addressing collective impact. Each type is described in turn and illustrated by an organizational case study. Through the analysis, six common themes that characterize all three types of organizations (e.g., leadership and strategy, communication and engagement, organizational infrastructure, methodology, data collection and analysis, and building capacity) are enumerated.
This white paper makes four concluding observations. First, the three case studies provide evidence of organizations conducting continuous improvement work in the field of education, albeit at different levels and in different ways. Second, entry points to continuous improvement work are not mutually exclusive, but are nested and, hence, mutually informative and comparative. Third, continuous improvement is not synonymous with improving all organizational processes simultaneously; rather, research and learning cycles are iterative and gradual in nature. Fourth, despite being both iterative and gradual, it is imperative that improvement work is planned and undertaken in a rigorous, thoughtful, and transparent fashion.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Southern)-Maryland-Montgomery County, North America-United States (Midwestern)-Wisconsin-Waukesha County-Menomonee Falls, North America-United States (Midwestern)-Ohio-Hamilton County-Cincinnati
Minnesota public education -- from preschool to college and everything in between -- is poised for a breakthrough. Education requires fundamental and systemic change to meet the needs of an increasingly competitive and global workforce, and growing diverse populations. This is the case particularly for Minnesota where great schools can prepare all kids for thriving futures.
This poll captures the opinions of over 400 teachers and hopes to bring about change that will eliminate the current situation of nation-trailing achievement gaps and high school graduation rates.
Building off of the success of MinnCAN's 2012 statewide public opinion poll, where 1,000 Minnesotans were interviewed on public education, this report takes a similar approach to dig deeper with district school teachers through a 28-question poll. The topics discussed were: effective teaching, educator evaluations, professional development and school staffing decisions.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Minnesota
Early childhood education is the cornerstone of our educational system. With benefits that include higher academic achievement, higher earnings as adults, a more productive civic life, high quality early childhood education is a proven-to-work strategy for all children. Yet, New York State's investment in early childhood programs and specifically in the Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) program has decreased over the years.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Northeastern)-New York
Children and Youth;Education and Literacy;Employment and Labor
This report presents findings from the first of three components of a mixed-methods study of middle school teacher turnover in New York City. The project is a collaboration between researchers at The Research Alliance for New York City Schools, New York University, Teachers College, and Baruch College. This study reveals that 55% of the teachers who entered middle schools between 2002 and 2009 left these schools within three years. Further, nearly 60% of departing middle school teachers left the New York City public school system altogether and another 23% either moved to schools that did not include the middle grades (Grades 6-8) or took on non-teaching positions. These findings suggest an exodus of newly-arrived teachers from middle schools, and they raise questions for future research about the causes, consequences, and implications of teacher turnover. The remaining two components of the Research Alliance's larger study -- a survey and a case study analysis -- will investigate these and other questions.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (New York Metropolitan Area)
