The No Child Left Behind Act, enacted in 2002, aimed to improve learning and eliminate achievement gaps by raising accountability in schools. The new requirements also generated volumes of valuable long-term data on students and teachers—data that are now grounding and guiding education policy and allowing researchers to answer long-held questions about what leads to student success. Read more.
Federal and state budgets are under unprecedented pressure: deficits are ballooning, programs are being cut back, and tax rolls are anemic, or worse. As part of the federal government's response to the severe recession, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) cushioned state budget cuts, particularly in education, and included investments in children and families -- yet next steps after ARRA are unknown.
New research by Urban Institute and Brookings Institution analysts reveals how children -- collectively and at different ages -- fare in the federal budget and how federal and state spending mesh. Drawing on these forthcoming reports, a panel of distinguished experts will begin a vital and timely exchange on how the nation can, amid severe fiscal and budgetary challenges, make the wisest public investments in its children.
Low-income youth and adults have less access to and lower rates of completion in higher education in the US than do others. What are states and local community college systems doing to deal with these problems?
In this paper, we review a wide range of efforts by community colleges and the states, with funding from private foundation as well as the federal government, to improve enrollments and completion rates among disadvantaged students. We review the extent to which such efforts are "proven" (based on rigorous evaluation evidence) or "promising" (with impressive outcomes that require strong evaluation). We then consider policies by states and the federal government that can advance
opportunities for the disadvantaged in this area.
An unmistakable sense of urgency runs throughout Creating a New Teaching Profession, with the top scholars and practitioners who coauthor the book underscoring that current systems for training, hiring, retaining, and rewarding teachers not only are imperfect, but are detrimental to building the best teacher workforce possible. Contributors to the book propose such major reforms as remaking longstanding teacher training systems and using private-sector approaches to modernize recruitment and compensation.
Eighteen education policy experts put the past decade's surge in high-school reform efforts to the test in Saving America's High Schools from the Urban Institute Press. Led by coeditors Becky Smerdon and Kathryn Borman, the team of authors size up national reform trends and draw on at least five years of research in Baltimore, New York City, Chicago, Ohio, and North Carolina.
Our educational system is in a continuous state of reform, yet outcomes are nowhere near what we can accept. Though the search for answers is perpetual, many efforts over the past decade have homed in on one feature of high schools—their size. If we simply reduce school size, the argument goes, students will gain a safer environment that can address their individual needs. It seems like common sense, but such changes alone have not proven a magic bullet. Saving America's High Schools offers quantitative research drawn from large-scale reform studies along with recommendations for federal, state, and district reform.
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