AIR researchers and leaders at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation began a nationwide study of teaching and learning in foundation-supported schools with a pilot study in Washington State.
If place heavily impacts social mobility, could strengthening schools be the key to overcoming the effects of growing up in a poor neighborhood? Peter Cookson, AIR principal researcher, explores this question in a blog post for the Education Policy Center.
What makes a school a place where Alaskan students want to be and want to do well? Why do students stay in school or drop out? And what do Alaskan students believe that schools can do to help them succeed? Researchers at AIR present the answers, provided directly by students, to these questions.
This report found that absences, course failures, course credits and GPA all can be used to accurately predict whether ninth-graders with disabilities will graduate from high school. Identifying these early warning indicators is especially crucial for students with disabilities, who drop out of high school at alarming rates. ...
The Quality Reading Project works to improve reading skills among primary-grade students in Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic through four main activities: (1) in-service teacher training; (2) increased availability of reading materials; (3) community support; and (4) government support. This report describes a study that reviewed Tajikistan’s teaching and learning ...
This brief uses the experience of eight California school districts—all members of the California Collaborative on District Reform—to suggest a more systemic approach to school turnaround.
Exclusionary school discipline policies once instituted to prevent serious infractions have crept into discipline practices for minor issues. Youth who participated in a roundtable on the subject contend that it limits opportunities to learn and compromises academic achievement; is applied disproportionately and subjectively; and deprives students of the ...
Schools that show better academic performance than would be expected given characteristics of the school and student populations are often described as “beating the odds.” State and local education agencies often attempt to identify such schools as a means of identifying strategies or practices that might be contributing to the ...
Getting a job is about more than academic performance. In this blog post, Kimberly Kendziora discusses the growing body of research on the importance of social and emotional skills, such as self-management, social awareness, and relationship skills.
What impact do Teach for America (TFA) members have on other teachers' performance? A strategy to "cluster" TFA members in high-need schools contributed to large gains in math achievement, but was found to have little effect on reading skills and no spillover effect on other teachers.