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."
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 ...
Some research has questioned whether taking STEM AP courses makes any difference when it comes to pursuing STEM majors in college and STEM occupations. New research led by AIR Senior Vice President and Institute Fellow George Bohrnstedt strongly contradicts those prior findings. In this Q&A, Bohrnstedt explains the findings and ...
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 ...
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 ...
Career and technical education (CTE) continues to gain traction with state and national policymakers, researchers, and educators across the country—evidenced by the creation of a federally funded center investigating CTE programs: the Career and Technical Education Research Network. AIR is leading this research network partnership under the direction of principal ...
More than 7 million high school and middle school students in Career and Technical Education programs—and their 140,000 teachers—are celebrating Career Technology Education Month in February. In this blog, Catherine Jacques describes the importance of these teachers, based on her recent research.
The federal regulations on teacher preparation, scheduled to be released next month, ask for a lot of new data about how well graduates perform in schools. But for students in those schools that might be too late. What's missing is a measure that can signal weakness or problems before candidates ...
NAEP results are Rorschach Tests for policy wonks—a golden chance for free-association policy speculation. Small fluctuations in average scores on NAEP give rise to big explanations. Forget the quibbling over tiny differences in test scores; it’s time to rebuild schools on evidence-based, comprehensive policies that have been shown to work ...
In this Q&A, Laura Hamilton, a senior director of education measurement and assessment at AIR, discusses the role of measurement and assessment in addressing systemic inequity, the potential implications of using artificial intelligence, and AIR’s work in these key areas.