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."
Do median wages paid to bachelor’s graduates demonstrate gender differences after “controlling” for choice across high and low paying programs of study? Data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that merges student level data with Unemployment Insurance wage data can provide an initial answer to this question. In this ...
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 ...
In this first of two blogs on apprenticeships in the U.S., AIR senior researcher Marjorie Cohen discusses how the U.S. might benefit from implementing the European model of registered apprenticeships.
Are teachers working in charter schools more effective in improving student outcomes compared to teachers working in traditional public schools? In this blog post, Umut Özek, a principal researcher at AIR, describes a new study in which he and his fellow authors examined the disparities in teacher effectiveness between charter ...
America’s universities rank high on almost any list of the world’s best universities, but this high esteem rests on a highly unequal distribution of wealth. With less than 4% of the 1,600 or so not-for-profit private universities reporting endowments of more than $1 billion each, why are they tax-exempt? As ...
Successive federal efforts to tackle the entrenched challenges of persistently low-performing schools have fallen far short of their goal. In this blog post, Kerstin Le Floch and Catherine Barbour offer three ways ESEA can build capacity in low-performing schools.
Did Congress make the right fixes to the rules governing funding for teaching and learning in ESSA? Kind of, according to AIR expert Jane Coggshall, in this blog post.
Of all the talks that parents should have with their children, a frank conversation about college costs and debt should be the least uncomfortable. In this blog post, Donna Desrochers discusses the importance of talking with teenagers about real college costs and the real life consequences of one of the ...
A major theme addressed by President Obama is improving low-income students’ access to the nation’s most prestigious campuses. This goal is wrapped in “undermatching”—the idea that low-income students are not applying to the more selective colleges they could attend. But, as this blog post explains, perhaps the more important goal ...