On July 31, 2018, the "Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act" (Public Law 115-224) (Perkins V, the Act, or statute), was signed into law and thus reauthorized and amended the "Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006." The U.S. Department of Education's (Department) Office of…

State leaders have long recognized the value of statewide tests. Many had well-developed testing systems long before the No Child Left Behind Act, signed in 2002, required annual assessments in grades 3-8. Another sign of that recognition is the recent plethora of new state testing requirements for K-3 students. But would states continue to test…

While the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) plays a role in workforce development, state policymakers actively seek ways beyond WIOA requirements to connect education with workforce development. In compliance with WIOA, all states have a statewide workforce development board or council. However, some states have gone beyond…

Any organization--a small business or start-up, a large established company, a nonprofit, and every level of government--depends on leadership to achieve more than the sum of its parts. The same is true for schools, where a single principal shapes the practice of dozens of teachers and the learning of hundreds--sometimes thousands--of students.…

Using multi-year data captured by annual national surveys of state community college directors, the study examined relationships among factors related to workforce education in community colleges. Variables of interest were related to the following categories: state and federal funding for workforce development, workforce development delivery in…

The Elementary and Secondary Schools Education Act (ESEA) was finally reauthorized as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The reauthorization was long overdue and with its passage comes much hype and some misinformation about what the law permits and does not permit. The purpose of this brief is to outline some of the key accountability…

While the provision of a "free appropriate public education" (FAPE) has contributed significantly to the educational experiences of students with disabilities, little is known about how services are actually provided in an online learning setting. Thus, telephone and face-to-face interviews were conducted with state directors of special…

This master data collection protocol describes the data that Mathematica collected for the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge Study of Tiered Quality Rating and Improvement Systems. This study was conducted for the Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The data were collected from reviews of applications, documents, and…

Research has long suggested that significantly increasing quality time in school for teaching and learning can have a positive impact on student achievement. Recognizing this connection, federal guidance requires low-performing schools to increase student learning time if they are implementing two popular reform models using school improvement…

The education sector is beginning to embrace a culture that values, demands and uses data to support improved decisionmaking at every level--in classrooms, at kitchen tables and in state capitols. This shift is due in large part to state policymakers' leadership over the last six years in building statewide longitudinal data systems that collect…

Several hundred of the nation's lowest-performing schools have recently undergone major changes in leadership and teaching staff to comply with federal requirements for using school improvement grants (SIGs) financed by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). In particular, schools that receive stimulus-funded SIG awards must…

In a 2012 paper for the Center for American Progress, "The State of Evaluation Reform," Patrick McGuinn (Drew University) identified the opportunities and challenges facing education agencies in Race to the Top (RTTT) grant-winning states as they prepared for the implementation of new teacher evaluation systems. The 2012 study undertook…

By late 2008, the United States was in the midst of its most severe economic recession since the 1930s, brought on by a collapse in real estate prices and exacerbated by the failure of many large banks and financial institutions. Heeding calls from economists, Congress and the Obama administration passed a historic law in early 2009 to stimulate…

This report synthesizes findings from CEP's (Center on Education Policy's) research on how the No Child Left Behind Act's school restructuring requirements are being implemented in Michigan, California, Maryland, Ohio, and Georgia. Document reviews and interviews with state officials were conducted in the five states, and case study research was…

By late 2008, the United States was in the midst of its most severe economic recession since the 1930s, brought on by a collapse in real estate prices and exacerbated by the failure of many large banks and financial institutions. Heeding calls from economists, Congress and the Obama administration passed an historic law in early 2009 to stimulate…