When President Obama took office in 2009, his administration quickly seized on teacher evaluations as an important public-policy problem. Today, much of his legacy on K-12 education rests on efforts to revamp evaluations in the hopes of improving teaching across the country, which his administration pursued via a series of incentives for states.…

This is the seventh in a series of hearings to inform this committee's reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. The focus of this hearing, teacher preparation, is profoundly important for all students, from the very youngest to adult students. Study after study shows that teacher quality is the decisive in-school factor in boosting student…

Nationally, 28 percent of all public elementary and secondary schools were in rural locations in 2013-14, serving 18 percent of all K-12 students (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics 2015). Rural schools serve students in sparsely populated areas and have smaller overall populations than schools in other…

Many policies and initiatives have been proposed or implemented to address the unique needs of military families who face special challenges while supporting the service of their military member(s). Some of those policies and initiatives have sought to focus on military-connected children (MCCs) and the particular academic challenges they face.…

The purpose of the United States Department of Education's (the Department) Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 "Agency Financial Report" (AFR) is to inform Congress, the President, other external stakeholders, and the American people on how the Department used the federal resources entrusted to it to promote student achievement and preparation for…

The purpose of the United States Department of Education's (the Department) Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 "Agency Financial Report" (AFR) is to inform Congress, the President, other external stakeholders, and the American people on how the Department used the federal resources entrusted to it to promote student achievement and preparation for…

In 2009, the federal government committed over $3 billion nationwide to help states and districts turn around their worst-performing schools. The U.S. Department of Education intended for the School Improvement Grants (SIGs) to spur dramatic change. This report looks at the results of a field study of the first-year implementation of those grants…

The purpose of the United States Department of Education's (the Department) Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 "Agency Financial Report" (AFR) is to inform Congress, the President, other external stakeholders, and the American people on how the Department used the federal resources entrusted to it to promote student achievement and preparation for…

For as long as there have been struggling schools in America's cities, there have been efforts to turn them around. But overall, school turnaround efforts have consistently fallen far short of hopes and expectations. Quite simply, turnarounds are not a scalable strategy for fixing America's troubled urban school systems. Fortunately, findings from…

The U.S. Department of Education is the agency of the federal government that establishes policy for, administers and coordinates most federal assistance to education. It assists the president in executing his education policies for the nation and in implementing laws enacted by Congress. The Department's mission is to serve America's students--to…

The purpose of the United States Department of Education's (the Department) Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 "Agency Financial Report" (AFR) is to inform Congress, the President, and the American people on how the Department has used the federal resources entrusted to it to promote achievement and preparedness of students entering a global…

Between the late 1980s and early 2000s, schools, districts, states, and the federal government devoted enormous resources to the implementation of Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models. With more than 1.6 billion federal dollars distributed through the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) project and its successor, the CSR project,…

The Obama Administration has signaled that it will include a $1.35 billion expansion of the "Race to the Top" (RTTT) fund in its FY 2011 budget. This is in addition to the $4.35 billion for RTTT included in last year's stimulus bill. Under the Department of Education's (DOE) guidelines for RTTT, states must meet certain requirements to…

The purpose of the United States Department of Education's (the Department) Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 "Agency Financial Report" (AFR) is to inform Congress, the President, and the American people on how the Department has used federal resources entrusted to it to promote achievement and preparedness of youth entering a global environment by…

A Washington research group is raising questions about the wisdom of the U.S. Department of Education's favored strategies for turning around the lowest-performing schools with stimulus funding, saying that its research shows that similar federal approaches to school restructuring have not been effective. The questions raised by the new study were…