Schools must be places of safety and support for all students. And yet, in an effort to make our schools safe havens, districts have adopted zero-tolerance policies and increased school policing. The result, however, has driven some of our most vulnerable students out of school and into a judicial system ...
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 ...
In this blog post, published as part of the work of the Midwest Comprehensive Center, Chris Times discusses how states can ensure that all students have access to excellent educators.
President Obama announced in August that the Department of Education would be creating the Postsecondary Institution Rating System (PIRS), a new rating system for colleges. The Department of Education issued a request for ideas on how to design and implement the PIRS. This series of blogs posts is adapted from ...
Studies find that positive approaches to school discipline at all ages can actually improve students' academic performance, and those students are less likely to become involved in the juvenile justice system or have need for behavioral services. These AIR resources support educators in their efforts to transform disciplinary practices in ...
In 2016, the Office of Correctional Education in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation embarked on a process of implementing professional learning communities (PLCs) in all 35 California state prisons. AIR provided professional development and consulting on the PLC process.
Increasing access to education in prison is a critical policy goal for enhancing equity and workforce development. AIR is conducting case studies of six distance and correspondence-based Prison Education Programs to examine implementation and outcomes relative to standards of quality and equity, with particular attention to programmatic and instructional practices. ...
Between a quarter and a half of those who complete a teacher preparation program don’t end up teaching after graduation. In our latest blog post, AIR’s Jenny DeMonte encourages policymakers to start tracking this data to help address teacher shortages and improve the teacher pipeline.
During the past two decades, there has been an increase in exclusionary and punitive discipline in US schools. These disciplinary approaches have been discriminatory in their impacts and have failed to improve school safety. Luckily, a growing body of evidence shows that changing discipline policies and practices can improve school ...
