The National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools (the Center) is deeply committed to ensuring that students with disabilities have equal access to charter schools and that charter schools are designed and operated to enable success for all students. To accomplish this goal, the Center conducts analyses and releases a comprehensive…

The advent of new technologies and increased access to robust connectivity is reshaping the K-12 landscape for teaching and learning. School districts nationwide are leveraging digital instructional materials and resources to deliver transformative and impactful personalized learning opportunities for students and to enhance the administrative…

The advent of new technologies and increased access to robust connectivity is reshaping the K-12 landscape for teaching and learning. School districts nationwide are leveraging digital instructional materials and resources to deliver transformative and impactful personalized learning opportunities for students and to enhance the administrative…

The opposing principles of local control and increased standardization are a prominent tension in the United States' education system. Since at least the early 1990s, this tension has taken shape around the accountability movement, defined by educational reforms that hold schools, teachers, and students accountable for performance on new…

There has been a sea change in teacher evaluation over the past eight years. Inspired in part by President Barack Obama's policies, schools have instituted teacher evaluation systems that include multiple measures of teacher impact. Model systems are aligned to systems of continuous improvement, helping teachers identify areas of weakness in their…

This report presents a multi-year study of how states are implementing their state college- and career-readiness standards. In this report, the Southern Regional Education Board's (SREB's) Benchmarking State Implementation of College- and Career-Readiness Standards project studied state efforts in 2014-15 and 2015-16 to foster effective…

After many years of teacher layoffs in California, school districts around the state are hiring again. With the influx of new K-12 funding, districts are looking to lower student-teacher ratios and reinstate classes and programs that were reduced or eliminated during the Great Recession. However, mounting evidence indicates that teacher supply has…

Turning around persistently low-performing K-12 schools and districts has been an elusive goal despite prioritization at the highest levels of government. In recent years, the U.S. Department of Education encouraged states to adopt tiered accountability systems, like the Massachusetts model, which allows state takeover of districts in cases of…

It has been said that while history shapes the hand a state is dealt, public policy determines how the hand is played. State policy for K-12 education--and, by extension, for arts education--is shaped through the actions of various state governmental entities--governors, legislatures, courts, and commissioners and boards of education--in response…

This white paper, examines state policies to improve affordability, encourage full-time enrollment, and incent timely completion of postsecondary credentials and degrees. The authors found that existing grant aid programs do not provide sufficient support to allow students with documented need to cover tuition costs and living expenses, nor do…

Why does tuition increase faster than inflation? And why does tuition continue to increase even when states increase their investments in public colleges and universities? These questions have perplexed policymakers and higher education consumers alike. Though tuition setting can be very complicated, one of the drivers for rising costs is price…

As governors respond to the need to significantly improve the quality of public education, they should consider incorporating stronger actions to improve mathematics instruction as part of their overall reform agenda. Governors can take the following actions to promote high-quality mathematics instruction for young children: (1) Become a champion…

This paper examines one key strategy for making school turnaround more effective: community engagement. To explore community engagement in action, the Reform Support Network (RSN) conducted studies between April and August of 2013 of 11 States and districts, urban and rural, engaged in the communities surrounding low-performing schools. The…

There is a pervasive and ongoing perception that leadership preparation is a problem. Important questions remain about the intentions, capacity, and impact of state departments of education engaged in leadership preparation program redesign. In this essay, I take up several issues concerning this state policy work, including whether a one size…

This article describes a project designed to raise the awareness of policymakers about the importance of information literacy to achieve societal goals. Issues benefit from the governmental support, prioritization, mandates, and funding that can result when there is policy behind them. Studies indicate that many people lack the ability to draw on…