Student participation in summer programming can be an effective way to address students' academic and developmental needs. When well implemented and well attended, summer enrichment programs, academic programs, and employment programs have demonstrated positive outcomes for youth in areas related to program content, including academic achievement…

As federal funding for summer learning as a pandemic recovery strategy phases out, state governments face decisions about their future role in supporting students' access to quality summer learning opportunities. This brief is based on the full report, "How States Are Expanding Quality Summer Learning Opportunities," and summarizes…

Home visiting connects expectant parents, new caregivers, and their young children with a support person, called a home visitor. The home visitor meets regularly with the family, develops a relationship with them, and supports them to achieve their goals and meet their needs. To reach the thousands of additional families who could benefit from…

This manuscript aims to answer the research question: What data are collected by teacher residency programs and a network of teacher residency programs, and how and why do faculty and NCTR staff use this data to advance both individual programs and the teacher residency model nationally? This paper explores how individual teacher residency…

As part of its Partnership for Pre-K Improvement (PPI) initiative, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored the RAND Corporation to study the cost of high-quality pre-K programming. The RAND study included three states--Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington--that were partnering with the foundation under PPI. The objective of the study was to…

There is strong evidence that children who attend high-quality pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs learn skills that benefit them in school and life. The price tag of most private programs puts them out of reach for some families, however. In response, many states and school districts fund pre-K programs to expand opportunities for their youngest…

States and localities throughout the United States are expanding their investments in pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs. Although spending on publicly funded pre-K programs is well documented, relatively less is known about the true cost to deliver the programs, especially considering varying quality standards and accounting for the resources used…

Over the past decade, local live productions of Shakespeare have become increasingly visible to scholars and audiences alike, both through critical work on the subject as well as through public projects such as Shakespeare on the Road. This visibility highlights the cultural and artistic work of regional theatre. On the one hand, local live…

When the COVID-19 pandemic drove schools online in March 2020, state education leaders were left without access to data needed to understand how best to support students. The pandemic revealed the strengths and limitations of state education data systems while inspiring new strategies for collecting, reporting and using data. In 2021, DataSmith…

In today's educational landscape, state and local educational agencies (SEAs and LEAs) often experience challenges connecting large-scale accountability data with actual school improvement initiatives. These challenges tend to be rooted in incoherent design and use of data systems for continuous improvement. As we aim to support SEAs in…

In 2017 the National Association of System Heads launched its Taking Student Success to Scale: High Impact Practices Network. The goals of this initiative were to identify and scale promising High Impact Practices (HIPs) at both the campus and system level to prioritize equitable participation for low-income and first-generation students and…

As state governments seek to improve the performance of institutions of K-12 and higher education, they often adopt educational policies that have similar names but different characteristics across states and with variations over time within states. Yet quantitative analyses generally examine the absence or presence of an educational policy…

The purpose of this study was to investigate and identify possible relationships between academic achievement, as measured by high school graduation rate and ACT composite scores of individual school districts within the state of Tennessee, and the per-pupil expenditure of each district. Research was conducted to determine whether a significant…

The Teacher Compensation Survey (TCS) was a research and development effort by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to explore the possibility of developing an administrative records survey that would compile compensation and demographic data on all public school teachers in the nation. A pilot survey in 2007 collected data from…

A critical component of environmental education is to ensure student understanding and use of available technologies to better experience and analyze spatially distributed features of the environment. Combining mobile technologies with geographic information systems in field data collection may provide a unique opportunity for students to feel…