The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies is a multi-domain adult skills assessment designed to understand how individuals’ education, workplace experiences, and other background factors relate to cognitive skills in the domains of literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments. This brief highlights differences between several countries ...
Improving the quality of instruction through the development of content standards is a critical step in developing effective curriculum and meaningful assessment to enhance student learning. In adult education, many programs do not use standards to guide their programs. The Adult Education Standards and Assessment Warehouse initiative was created in ...
In the marketplace, people with disabilities—and their families, friends, and advocates—wield considerable spending power. This underrecognized market sector offers tremendous potential to the business community. AIR and its partners created two research briefs that inform the business community in Boston and several other top metropolitan areas about the challenges faced ...
The Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIACC) is a cyclical, large-scale, direct household assessment that compares the basic skills and competencies of adults around the world. It measures relationships between individuals’ backgrounds and cognitive skills in the areas of literacy, numeracy and problem-solving. AIR provides technical, analytical, and ...
Thirty years after the release of the landmark A Nation at Risk report on the quality of U.S. education, seven experts with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) assess the report’s lasting impact in relation to current education challenges and reforms.
37% of adults in the Permian Basin, a 22-county area covering large swaths of West Texas and Southeastern New Mexico, are low literate. The Literacy Coalition of the Permian Basin is committed to confronting this challenge by providing resources, increasing awareness, and convening partners to ensure efforts are aligned and ...
Principals influence student learning by leading efforts to improve school climate; recruiting, retaining, and supporting effective teachers; and driving organizational change. Too often, however, states and districts focus on teachers rather than principals when planning for professional supports. This brief offers an easy to digest overview of current school leadership ...
The initiatives to enhance adult learning program accountability and assessment systems of the following states are described in this paper: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Oregon, Texas, Washington, West Virginia.
School improvement policy for the past few decades has been characterized by mandated lists of activities designed to stimulate a dramatic turnaround in student achievement. In the long run, this policy approach did not engender the necessary school-level changes. This brief demonstrates why new policies must aim to get the ...
Mounting evidence shows that social and emotional learning skills may be more predictive than test scores of student success in English language arts and math. In this blog post, Deborah Moroney and Michael McGarrah discuss how states and districts can build systems to support and properly assess these social and ...