School teachers have been taking attendance since there were school teachers. It turns out that the simple act of noting who is missing—and then doing something about it in a systematic way—may be a key element in student success. In this blog post, David Blumenthal shares the latest research ...
The old either/or model of college-prep or vocational education is out of sync with the needs of 21st-century America. Career pathways offer a way out of this bind. They help high school students gain secondary and postsecondary education, training, and support services while they acquire marketable skills, industry-recognized credentials, and ...
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 ...
In this blog post, Zeyu Xu discusses findings from his study in Kentucky, the first state to implement the Common Core State Standards, from the encouraging findings about student achievement during the transition from the old standards to caveats about whether the achievement gains were caused by the new ones. ...
In this blog post, AIR expert Chaney Mosley discusses the importance of career and technical education (CTE) classes to help students plan for the future.
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 ...
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."
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. ...
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 ...
English learners (ELs) are an increasingly significant student population, outpacing the demographic growth of non-EL students by more than 40 percent nationwide, and growing by as much as 800 percent in some states. In this blog post, Diane August and Erin Haynes take a look at how the Every ...