All Reports
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Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Broadening Participation in STEM: A Call to Action
This report, produced by AIR with consultation from the Institute for Higher Education Policy, details the key issues to consider and steps we should take to improve our position in STEM innovation. It includes six critical policy questions, along with an open letter to the nation on broadening perceptions in order to broaden participation.
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Monday, February 4, 2013
Avoid Simple Solutions and Quick Fixes
This paper examines efforts from 2008 to 2012 by the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) – with the assistance of the American Institutes for Research – to improve safety, order, and the conditions for learning in its schools.
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Monday, January 28, 2013
First-Year Undergraduate Remedial Coursetaking: 1999–2000, 2003–04, and 2007–08
A new brief, First-Year Undergraduate Remedial Coursetaking: 1999–2000, 2003–04, and 2007–08, adds to the evidence on remediation, uses data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study to measure changes in the frequency of remedial coursetaking in U.S. postsecondary institutions.
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Thursday, January 3, 2013
The Impact of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Program on Student Reading Achievement
The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences has released a study of the impact of the Measures for Academic Progress (MAP) program. Conducted by AIR through the Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest 2005-2011 contract, the study involved 32 elementary schools in five Illinois districts.
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Wednesday, January 2, 2013
How Long Does It Take? STEM Ph.D. Completion for Underrepresented Minorities
This issue brief is the first in a series produced by AIR to promote research, policy, and practice related to broadening the participation of traditionally underrepresented groups in STEM doctoral education and the workforce.
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Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Evaluation of the Content Literacy Continuum
The Institute for Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education has published the findings of a randomized study conducted through a partnership between AIR and MDRC (through the Midwest Regional Education Laboratory 2005-2011 contract). The study examines the impact and implementation of the Content Literacy Curriculum, a tiered whole-school intervention aimed at improving adolescent literacy.
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Friday, December 14, 2012
College Spending in a Turbulent Decade: Findings From the Delta Cost Project
A new data brief from the Delta Cost Project at AIR focuses on financial struggles of colleges and universities two years after the onset of the Great Recession. Among other findings, the data show that among nonprofit colleges and universities, community colleges suffered the greatest financial hardships of the decade.
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Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Keeping Young People Out of Prison and in the Classroom - The School-to-Prison Pipeline
Today, nearly 95,000 youth under the age of 21 are in custody in publicly and privately operated facilities in the U.S. Increasingly, youth are finding themselves involved in the juvenile justice system as a result of school-related conduct. Researchers suggest that this trend, known as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” is an unintended consequence of harsh school discipline policies such as “zero tolerance” and referring students to the police or courts for school code violations historically handled by schools.
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Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Broadening Access to Algebra I: The Impact on Eighth Graders Taking an Online Course
To study the effectiveness of using an online course to broaden eighth graders’ access to Algebra I, the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and the Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) performed the first rigorous evaluation of the impact of an online course on student outcomes. This three-year study examined the effects of offering a fully online Algebra I course to eighth-grade students in mostly rural schools in Maine and Vermont.
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Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Selecting Growth Models for School and Teacher Evaluations
The specifics of how growth models should be constructed and used to evaluate schools and teachers is a topic of lively policy debate in states and school districts nationwide. In this paper we take up the question of model choice and examine three competing approaches.
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Monday, October 15, 2012
The Earning Power of Recent Graduates From Virginia’s Colleges and Universities
The authors of this report, the result of a partnership between the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia and College Measures, explore the variation in first-year earnings for graduates from individual degree programs at individual colleges. The results show that the degrees students earn, and where they earn them, matter.
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Monday, October 8, 2012
Race to the Top–District (RTTD) Guidance and Action Brief
AIR and Turnaround for Children have authored two white papers to support districts who are applying for the Race to the Top – District (RTTD) competition. The two white papers provide guidelines for establishing foundational conditions as outlined by RTTD and for using a specific set of metrics to measure their effectiveness and impact.
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Thursday, September 20, 2012
Learning from the Past: Drawing on California’s CLAS Experience to Inform Assessment of the Common Core
The Common Core State Standards represent an exciting step forward for California and for the nation as a whole in supporting strong instruction that can better prepare students for college and career success. As educators embrace the challenges associated with assessment of the Common Core, it is instructive to learn from the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS) experience in the early 1990s—both to build on its successes and to avoid the mistakes that led to its demise.
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Tuesday, September 18, 2012
The Earning Power of Graduates from Tennessee's Colleges and Universities
This report, the result of a partnership between the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) and College Measures, draws upon previously not publicly available data to compare the average first-year earnings of recent graduates from two-year and four-year institutions across Tennessee.
