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."
Given persistent failure rates and mounting student debt, how prepared students are to enter and succeed in college is suddenly everyone’s business. According to Mark Schneider, in this blog post, ACT data shows many students ready to leave for college are not ready academically in at least one area. ...
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. ...
Recent data shows that while students from low-income families began 9th grade with high aspirations of going to college, by junior year their expectations decline considerably. In this blog post, Sakiko Ikoma and Markus Broer argue that closing the enrollment gap between low-income students and their more affluent counterparts means ...
At 21, many foster youth “age out” of financial benefits and supports from the child welfare system—before they even finish college. Given the challenges they face, it’s not surprising that only 3 to 10 percent of them earn undergraduate degrees compared with 34 percent of young adults who weren’t in ...
On the traditional school path, Step 1 is graduating from high school, Step 2 is going to college, and Step 3 is earning a credential or degree; but overall, only about 59 percent of high school graduates who make it to Step 2 finish Step 3, earning a degree or ...
One size does not fit all when it comes to Career and Technical Education (CTE) teacher evaluation. In this blog post, Jane Coggshall discusses the difficulty of evaluating CTE teachers based on student progress, the subject of recent research at AIR.
Unlike transitional bilingual programs that mainly seek to prepare English learners for general education classrooms, dual language programs aim to develop students’ literacy and content area knowledge in both English and a partner language, such as Spanish or Chinese. In this blog post, Andrea Boyle and Lisa Tabaku discuss their ...
Zero tolerance policies were born out of fear and even desperation. After the 1999 school shootings in Colorado, some educators and public figures adopted a tough law-and-order stance; but, instead of deterrence, we got a discipline regime of mass suspensions. In this blog post, AIR's Peter Cookson argues that zero ...
NAEP's own data shows different rates among college seniors who are proficient vs. those who are ready for college. Until achievement results for 12th grade students with a good dose of Common-Core-based education under their belts become available, says Fran Stancavage in this blog post, educators who set NAEP standards ...