The Forum is pleased to present the "Forum Guide to Student Learning Data During Pandemic School Closures and Beyond." The purpose of this resource is to review how local education agencies (LEAs) and state education agencies (SEAs) changed their approaches to collecting and using student data during the pandemic and how they are working…

The Forum Guide to Reporting Civil Rights Data presents a variety of effective methods through which local education agencies (LEAs) report civil rights data to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. In addition, the guide provides examples of how state education agencies can voluntarily help their LEAs with Civil Rights Data…

In this article, the authors report on the results of a three-year study they conducted on assessment practices in general education courses at Duke University as part of a three-institution (Duke, the University of Kansas, and the University of Nebraska) research project funded by the Spencer Foundation. At all three institutions, researchers…

This article highlights the development process and data-driven decisions that characterized a 5-year iterative process of development and evaluation of a Tier 2 early language curriculum, "Story Friends." This curriculum was specifically designed to be effective and feasible for high fidelity implementation in preschool settings.…

This series of papers brings together distinguished experts writing on the use of class action litigation to reform public child welfare systems. It is an effort to tease out of four decades of experience in this work, the factors that increase the likelihood that litigation will result in successful system reform. This publication is an outgrowth…

The following document represents a Problem Based Learning Project (PBL) around the central theme of school improvement, the components of school improvement, and the importance of the presence and interaction of five central components of school improvement. Five central components, or constructs, identified and selected from a breadth of…

The following document represents a Problem Based Learning Project (PBL) around the central theme of school improvement, the components of school improvement, and the importance of the presence and interaction of five central components of school improvement. Five central components, or constructs, identified and selected from a breadth of…

Interest in multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) as a process for school system reform is gaining momentum nationwide. Confusion exists as to what MTSS is and how response to intervention (RtI) and professional learning communities (PLCs) are related to its implementation. This article seeks to reconcile these differences through a descriptive…

America brims with education data and these days it seems everyone in education claims to be guided by data. In this book, leaders and scholars map the landscape of data providers and users and explores why what is supplied by the former but frequently fails to meet the needs of the latter. It documents the barriers to collecting good information,…

A few years ago, in "Student Success in College (SSiC)," the authors profiled twenty colleges and universities that were unusually effective in fostering student engagement and success, defined as better-than-predicted scores on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and better-than-predicted graduation rates. These schools are…

In today's economy, employers increasingly demand that workers have a high school diploma, yet America's graduation rates are unacceptably low, particularly among poor and minority students. Nationally, only about 70 percent of students graduate from high school on time with a regular diploma; for African American and Hispanic students, this…

Policy decision makers, early educators, and early interventionists face numerous challenges as they develop and implement statewide accountability systems to evaluate and improve children's early intervention and early childhood special education outcomes. Kansas was an early adopter of the Child Outcomes Summary Form (COSF) developed by the…

Graduation rates are a fundamental indicator of whether or not the nation's public school system is doing what it is intended to do: enroll, engage, and educate youth to be productive members of society. Since almost 90 percent of the fastest-growing and highest-paying jobs require some postsecondary education, having a high school diploma and the…

Staff development efforts are being designed to have a greater impact on the systems in which professionals work to increase the likelihood that individual positive behavior support (PBS) plans will be effective. Statewide efforts aimed at embedding PBS into developmental disability organizations and other agencies must include longitudinal…