Educational reform in the United States is perpetually evolving. Much of the recent reforms have concentrated on high-stakes testing and assessment, but a parallel effort has been emerging in the field of vocational and career education. Prompted partly by federal legislation--most recently by the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act…

This latest brief updates education leaders on the key policies the 13 (Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia) Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states plan to implement under federal waivers to No Child Left Behind. It details,…

This project assesses the feasibility of creating a voluntary, nationwide data dictionary that can be used to standardize the reporting of postsecondary accountability reporting requirements for the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 (otherwise known as Perkins IV). Variables, field codes, and programming instructions,…

The Education Commission of the States reviewed all 36 Race to the Top (RttT) round II applications. Each of the 36 states that applied for round II funding referenced pay for performance under the heading of "Improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance." The majority of states outlined pay for performance…

This Quick Reference Document has been prepared by the Regional Resource Center Program Fiscal Priority Team to aid RRCP State liaisons and other Technical Assistance (TA) providers in understanding the general context of State questions surrounding Maintenance of State Financial Support (MFS) and Local Educational Agency (LEA) Maintenance of…

Nearly all governors have designated a state early childhood advisory council to advise policymakers in the state on how to best meet the needs of children from birth to school entry. Early childhood advisory councils in the states vary in their structure and scope, but all of them provide recommendations on improving the quality, availability,…

Within the City of Chicago, a wide variety of public and private programs are geared towards preparing adults and youth for the workforce. This report of workforce development programs provides an overview of federal, state, and city workforce development programs within the City of Chicago through a detailed inventory table of the programs…

The state's Race to the Top (RTT) application requires changes to the state's evaluation/accountability system. It requires a teacher effectiveness measure, district effectiveness measure, leader effectiveness measure. Regarding the teacher effectiveness measure, RTT requires linking the data of individual students to individual teachers as part…

This bibliography summarizes recent research on the structure and effectiveness of workforce development programs. While the term "workforce development" can mean many things, this document focuses on programs to help low-skill, low-wage and displaced workers increase their employment and earnings, as well as labor market trends that…

This Quick Reference Document has been prepared by the Regional Resource Center Program ARRA/Fiscal Priority Team to aid RRCP State Liaisons and other (Technical Assistance) TA providers in understanding the general context of state questions surrounding excess cost. As a "first-stop" for TA providers in investigating excess cost…

Enacted in 1997, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) represented the largest expansion of U.S. public health care coverage since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid 32 years earlier. Although the program has recently been reauthorized, there remains a considerable lack of thorough and well-designed evaluations of the program. In…

The "Annual Disability Statistics Compendium" is a publication of statistics on people with disabilities and government programs that serve the population with disabilities and is modeled after the Statistical Abstracts of the United States, published yearly by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The "Compendium" is designed to…

With over 4,400 colleges and universities offering a variety of degrees and programs, and more than 2,000 non-degree granting institutions, the postsecondary education landscape within the United States can be a complex web to navigate for high school students (U.S. Department of Education, 2012). The transition from high school to postsecondary…

U.S. educators and policymakers are concerned about the poor performance of the public schools, particularly schools that serve students from low-income families. Although education is primarily a state function, the federal government also has a longstanding interest in improving education for disadvantaged students, and it targets funding to…

Nearly every high-priority item in national, federal, state, and local discussions about education--and policy proposals across the political spectrum--requires high-quality longitudinal data to inform its design, implementation, and evaluation. This factsheet shares Data Quality Campaign's (DQC's) analysis of what "Data for Action 2011:…