Competency-based education is an educational approach that focuses on mastery of an expanded set of competencies—rather than seat time—as a measure of student learning. This brief explores how states and districts can define learner competencies that reflect the full range of knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for students to achieve ...
Apprentice retention is a dynamic process that is affected by multiple factors that change over time. This brief, Improving Apprenticeship Completion Rates, summarizes the findings of our review of studies on apprentice retention and provides recommended strategies to mitigate factors negatively affecting attrition. ...
This research brief, the second from the Back on Track study, describes the role of in-class mentors in the online classrooms and examines whether students benefited from additional instructional support from their in-class mentors.
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."
Technology has enormous potential to transform the way teachers teach and students learn. In this video interview, Tracy Gray, an AIR expert on education technology, explains how to effectively use technology to engage students in their own learning.
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. ...
In his final State of the Union address, President Obama said, “We live in a time of extraordinary change… and whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.” In this blog post, AIR’s Peter Cookson says the key to dealing with this change is ...
For adult learners with dependent children, pursuing postsecondary education is complicated. An AIR study explores the fact that better supporting adult learners means making significant changes to the learner experience at postsecondary institutions, and in this blog the researchers focus specifically on findings that are particularly meaningful for parenting adult ...
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 ...
As new technologies emerge, there is a growing perception that schools must utilize the latest technologies. This brief’s authors conducted evaluations of two large-scale technology initiatives and here share six lessons learned about common pitfalls during early stages of implementation.