The Midwest Comprehensive Center (MWCC) at AIR, funded through a U.S. Department of Education grant from October 2012 to September 2019, provides technical assistance for the state education agencies of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

As California approaches a new system of academic standards, instruction, and assessment, it enters familiar territory.

California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) has introduced changes that alter the conditions under which educators, administrators, and community leaders approach their roles in the K-12 education system.

Foundations in the United States make substantial investments in public education, nearly $5 billion in 2010. They do so for a variety of reasons that include improving educational conditions and outcomes, supporting innovation, and increasing access for the underserved.

The field of education is increasingly focused on data-driven decision making. Education researchers and practitioners recognize the importance of data for improving classroom instruction and reforming struggling schools.

This user-friendly guidebook and toolkit was developed by special education experts to support charter school leaders and special education managers as they build special education programs to serve students with disabilities.

AIR and Turnaround for Children have authored two white papers to support districts who are applying for the Race to the Top – District (RTTD) competition. The two white papers provide guidelines for establishing foundational conditions as outlined by RTTD and for using a specific set of metrics to measure their effectiveness and impact.

This report presents selected findings from the public school district data file of the 2007–08 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is a nationally representative sample survey of public, private, and Bureau of Indian Education-funded (BIE) K–12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The Reauthorizing ESEA Pocket Guides are written by AIR experts to assist policymakers and educators as they consider changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

This brief uses the experience of eight California school districts—all members of the California Collaborative on District Reform—to suggest a more systemic approach to school turnaround.

This testimony summarizes recent and ongoing research studies conducted by AIR and others for the U.S. Department of Education on school turnaround.

The findings of this study suggest that middle and high school students who attend charter schools significantly outperform their counterparts attending traditional schools, while the differences in student performance between charter and pilot schools were mixed.

This brief draws on dialogue and investigation among the district practitioners, researchers, and policymakers participating in the California Collaborative on District Reform. It discusses ways in which districts can approach mathematics education given the current fiscal and political context in California.

AIR surveyed school climate in 33 Alaska school districts between 2006 and 2009. Overall school climate increased in these districts at the same time that statewide achievement test results declined—especially for math. This report explores the nature of the relationship between school climate and student achievement over time, concluding that, at a district level, improvements in school climate buffered the decline in achievement.

This fourth and final brief in the California Collaborative on District Reform series examines how the Fresno-Long Beach Learning Partnership uses data to inform work across and within the districts. The Partnership is a collaboration that aims to improve student outcomes, accelerate achievement for all students, and close achievement gaps by capitalizing on shared systemic capacity-building across two high-need districts.

Building on existing external school support literature, this brief offers a set of indicators for assessing the quality of support provided to low-performing schools, with respect to the No Child Left Behind Act.

Overall, performance of low-performing schools (both those participating and not participating in the HPSGP) is improving in an era in which state and federal accountability systems have been introduced.

National and state level on student enrollment by grade, numbers of high school completers, and the averaged freshman graduation rate for 2004-05.

This Field Guide should be used by schools and districts to assist them in developing well-articulated and widely shared plans for creating middle schools where all students succeed.

The CSRQ Center Report on Education Service Providers (ESPs) is a first-of-its-kind, scientifically based, and consumer-oriented review of the effectiveness and quality of seven widely implemented ESP models. ESPs provide a comprehensive approach to whole school improvement, including administrative services.

Each year, when states release assessment results, new schools join the ranks of those identified for improvement under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Associated with this identification are mandated actions which have the potential to derail or redirect existing school reform efforts. The question remains of how to reconcile the implementation of NCLB accountability mandates with ongoing CSR efforts.

The process through which a school adopts a comprehensive school reform (CSR) model has been suggested to be a key element in the lifecycle of school reform, contributing to stakeholder buy-in and subsequent implementation. In this paper, we study the model adoption process, both on a national scale with survey data and in closer depth with qualitative case study data.

By examining how comprehensive school reformers complete their life course, this paper highlights the importance of studying sustainability as well as the importance of being clear about what is being sustained.

The purpose of this paper is to 1) present a multi-methods approach of evaluating comprehensive school reform models, 2) describe the Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center’s standards for evaluating CSR effectiveness; and 3) provide pilot data and results from one comprehensive school reform model provider.

AIR, in partnership with Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) and EdSource, conducted the legislatively mandated independent evaluation of the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP) and the High Achieving/Improving Schools Program (HA/ISP) of the Public Schools Accountability Act (PSAA) of 1999.