Every year, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics releases an annual report, America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being. AIR subject matter experts have identified some interesting findings from several indicators in the 2019 report’s education domain and explain why they matter. ...
A December 2015 AIR study finds that Transitional Kindergarten, the first year of a two-year kindergarten program for young five-year-olds in California, appears to improve children’s school readiness in critical areas of academic learning and development. Researchers Karen Manship and Heather Quick explain how and suggest next steps. ...
The old either/or model of college-prep or vocational education is out of sync with the needs of 21st-century America. Career pathways offer a way out of this bind. They help high school students gain secondary and postsecondary education, training, and support services while they acquire marketable skills, industry-recognized credentials, and ...
The Texas Legislature passed a mandate to create several school interventions designed to develop strong and effective school leaders, and funded the Texas Principal Excellence Program (TxPEP) to improve student academic achievement, graduation rates, and teacher retention by improving leadership skills. Specifically, the program was designed to help principals learn ...
It’s been 40 years since performance standards were substantially revised for Head Start. The newly Revised Head Start Rules were approved and released last September. They include four major changes: increased duration, expanded access, special supports for vulnerable populations, and improved supports for teachers. In this blog post, Eboni Howard ...
Taking advanced courses in high school predicts a broad array of positive outcomes, yet students from certain backgrounds have been excluded from these courses historically. To address this problem, more than 60 districts in Washington state implemented a policy that automatically enrolled all qualified high school students in advanced coursework. ...
Parents, teachers, schools, districts, states, and especially students all want schools that prepare graduates to thrive in the 21st century. In this blog post, Anne Mishkind asks what it means to be "college and career ready."