The Center on Education Policy (CEP), an independent nonprofit organization, has been monitoring national adequate yearly progress (AYP) data going back to school year 2005-06. In April 2011, the author and her colleagues released a report with estimates of the number of schools in the nation and each state that did not make AYP in 2010, as well…

Literacy-Embedded Play Centers (LEPC) are important components of preschool classrooms. These centers encourage the development of literacy skills in an environment that promotes play and interaction with literacy tools. By highlighting the process teacher candidates used to plan, construct, and implement LEPC, a framework for development is…

William Faulkner famously wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." He would not be surprised to learn that Americans, 150 years after the Civil War began, are still getting it wrong. Did America's most divisive war start over slavery or states' rights? The author says that too many people--including educators--get it wrong. The author…

The language that students and teachers use to describe what they like best about M. O. Ramay Junior High School is strikingly similar. Both groups talk at length about how they are treated with respect and given freedom. Teachers describe the freedom to teach and students describe the freedom to be an individual. Both groups quickly add that with…

In this article, the authors offer an interpretation of the history of the "Healthy People" initiative showing that the outcomes remain largely the same, with appropriate decennial adjustment of the proliferating numerical targets and increased delineation of objectives for special populations. But the strategies by which those outcomes are to be…

Accessing Curriculum through Technology Tools (ACTTT), a model development project, was developed and tested by staff of the Center for Best Practices in Early Childhood (the Center), a research and development unit within the College of Education and Human Services at Western Illinois University. The major goal of ACTTT was to develop,…

Children from different backgrounds have disparate access to cultural capital, which may influence their academic success. The purpose of this study was to examine the links between family background, home literacy experiences, and emergent literacy skills among preschoolers enrolled in Head Start programmes. The background characteristics studied…

This report presents descriptive findings on school practices in 12 states for schools explicitly held accountable for the performance of the students with disabilities (SWD) subgroup. The study found that, when surveyed in 2011, elementary schools accountable for the SWD subgroup were 15.8 percentage-points more likely than never-accountable…

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 injected $7 billion into two of the Obama administration's signature competitive education grant programs: Race to the Top (RTT) and School Improvement Grants (SIG). While RTT focused on state policies and SIG focused on school practices, both programs promoted related policies and practices,…

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 injected $7 billion into two of the Obama administration's signature competitive education grant programs: Race to the Top (RTT) and School Improvement Grants (SIG). While RTT focused on state policies and SIG focused on school practices, both programs promoted related policies and practices,…

How can States address the continual and extraordinary challenge of sustaining and adapting the reforms they have implemented to improve student outcomes? What steps can States take to do so in the face of inevitably evolving conditions--such as a change in resources (for example, the end of a grant), leadership (a transition in personnel or…

This report on a statewide telephone survey describes child care use in Minnesota among households with children 12 and younger. Minnesota has an estimated 908,000 children ages 12 and younger; 24 percent are ages 0 to 2, 24 percent ages 3 to 5, 30 percent ages 6 to 9 and 23 percent ages 10 to 12. Of the nearly 500,000 households with one or more…

A local concern has been the effectiveness of school improvement efforts such as professional learning communities (PLCs) on student achievement. The results of this study are necessary as policy makers, school districts, administrators, and teachers aim to increase student achievement and the effectiveness of PLCs. The purpose of this study was…

The Obama administration's Race to the Top (RTT) competitive grant program has been heralded for revolutionizing the federal role in education and transforming state school reform efforts. This paper offers an initial analysis of the origins, evolution, and impact of RTT. In many ways, RTT is an attempt to circumvent the perceived failings of No…

This report responds to two mandates for GAO under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). First, it is the latest report on the uses of and accountability for Recovery Act funds in selected states and localities. Second, it comments on recipients' reports of the jobs created and retained. The Recovery Act provided $2.1…