An AIR report finds that Pennsylvania’s system for financing public schools severely underfunds many of the state’s highest need urban and rural public school districts. The report found that the average levels of both school spending and student achievement in Pennsylvania are above the national average, but fail to meet ...
Competency-based education makes student mastery of learning goals—rather than seat time—the metric to determine student credit and progression. Take a closer look at how schools implement competency-based education, and how it is related to what students need to learn effectively.
In a longitudinal, quasi-experimental study that spanned more than a decade, AIR found that attending a high school with an explicit focus on deeper learning resulted in positive short-term outcomes, but few longer-term outcomes. In this Q&A, AIR Principal Researcher Kristina Zeiser and Senior Researcher Catherine Bitter share insights about ...
A new book, edited and authored by experts from AIR and their colleagues, presents comprehensive strategies and tools to help create strong conditions for learning in schools that can lead to excellent and equitable student outcomes.
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."
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 ...
Nineteen youths accepted AIR's invitation to talk about how harsh school discipline has impacted them and the risks and challenges of the "school-to-prison" pipeline in front of an audience of policymakers and practitioners who work on juvenile justice and related issues. The participants, ages 16 to 24, spoke ...
Informing practice with the best research and making research more relevant to practice are easier said than done. Making a tangible difference in people’s lives is harder still. In this series of short commentaries, AIR experts reflect on ways to meet the challenge.
This report provides estimates of student victimization and characteristics of victims and nonvictims using data from the 2005 National Crime Victimization Survey Basic Screen Questionnaire, the NCVS Crime Incident Report, and the School Crime Supplement to the NCVS.
Student agency, or the ability to manage one’s learning, can have significant effects on academic achievement as students take an active role in seeking and internalizing new knowledge. The purpose of this study was to identify the instructional practices that may be useful for the development of different aspects of ...