The New Education Initiative (NEI), founded by Professor Yongxin Zhu at Soochow University in 2000, has had a widespread and enduring impact on Chinese basic education. It has transformed the education ecosystem in many regions in China, with its theory and practice inspiring numerous teachers who have suffered excessive pressures under the…

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps people with low incomes avoid hunger and afford food. It stimulates the economy, improves individuals' success at school and work, and promotes better health. SNAP's Employment and Training (E&T) program is designed to assist participants in gaining skills, training, or work experience…

Across the country, colleges using Complete College America (CCA) strategies are improving graduation rates. But despite these overall gains, data continues to show persistent institutional performance gaps for BILPOC (Black, Indigenous, Latinx, People of Color) students and students ages 25 and older. Students in both of these groups…

From 2012 to 2018, the Exploring Engagement Fund of The James Irvine Foundation provided risk capital for more than 100 engagement projects conducted by California arts nonprofits. These organizations had innovative ideas and a readiness to take bold steps to engage groups often underrepresented among mainstream arts participants--specifically…

This report explores the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Deep-End Initiative, which is helping juvenile justice jurisdictions safely and significantly reduce youth confinement -- especially for young people of color. In America today, youth of color are consistently over-represented in courtrooms and detention centers, youth prisons and other…

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) efforts in higher education are decades old, yet progress continues to be slow and elusive for many campuses. Recent events in colleges and universities across the United States suggest that long-standing challenges related to access, equity and inclusion remain as entrenched and intractable as they have ever…

When implementing environmental education and interventions to promote one pro-environmental behavior, it is seldom asked if and how non-target pro-environmental behaviors are affected. The spillover effect proposes that engaging in one behavior affects the probability of engagement or disengaging in a second behavior. Therefore, the positive…

The Better Math Teaching Network (BMTN) is looking to transform high school math instruction in New England and beyond. Through this network, researchers and practitioners are working together to make high school Algebra I classes more student centered. This report outlines findings from the first year of this developmental evaluation of the…

The University of Alaska System and its constituent institutions are faced with significant--and opposing--forces and pressures. The future well-being of the state will, in many ways, be shaped by the nature and extent of their contributions to the education of the state's citizens and workforce, the expansion and diversification of the state's…

Kenya is one of the countries whose teachers the UNESCO (2015) report cited as lacking curriculum support in the classroom. As is the case in many African countries, a large portion of teachers in Kenya enter the teaching profession when inadequately prepared, while those already in the field receive insufficient support in their professional…

Historically, states and districts have largely invested in teacher professional development (PD)--ranging from one-time workshops to collaborative peer learning communities--as the primary strategy to help teachers improve their practice. Despite its potential, in its present state, PD has gained a poor reputation among educators and those who…

This paper reports on a rigorous literature review of research into medium of instruction in Ghana and India, whose language-in-education policies represent two contrasting models of use of local languages and the development of competence in English. The paper begins by briefly overviewing the language-in-education policy in these two countries…

Following four years of continuous expansion in scale, the Confucius Institutes have begun entering the stage of implicit development: the most pressing question that needs answering is whether the Confucius Institutes, which are devoted to the dissemination of Chinese culture, can achieve the spread of Chinese culture overseas through day-to-day…

In 2010, the Institute of Education Sciences commissioned a much-needed national evaluation of response to intervention (RTI). The evaluators defined their task very narrowly, asking "Does the use of universal screening, including a cut-point for designating students for more intensive Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions, increase children's…

Measurable targets, key performance indicators, value for money--whatever we may think of the "impact agenda," it looks like it is here to stay. Are we trapped in a positivist, new managerialist spiral of demonstrating the value of our work, or can we take the lead in reframing the discourse on how educational development proves its…