acl Consulting was commissioned in November 2018 to undertake research for the UK Department for Education (DfE) aimed at understanding costs and cost drivers in the Further Education (FE) sector. The main aim of the research was to provide estimates of the cost of delivering good quality FE provision. Specifically, to: (1) Provide information on…

Large numbers of U.S. students lack proficiency in science, and students from different ethnic and socioeconomic groups show disparities in science achievement. Science knowledge and skills are important for both academic and workplace success, and a variety of interventions have been developed to improve student achievement in science. The…

The main focus of the paper is on youth unemployment and wider transitions into work, but it also has some thoughts on adult unemployment and re-training. This paper is founded upon a basic assumption -- namely that if the public money available across the United Kingdom to support measures around skills and unemployment is finite, then targeting…

This paper considers an unavoidable feature of the school environment, class rank. What are the long run effects of a student's ordinal rank in elementary school? Using administrative data from all public school students in Texas, we show that students with a higher third grade academic rank, conditional on achievement and classroom fixed effects,…

We randomly assign applicants to over-subscribed programs to study the effects of teaching hard and soft skills in vocational training and examine their impacts on skills acquisition and labor market outcomes using both survey and administrative data. We find that providing vocational training that either emphasizes social or technical skills…

Schools, working together with local health departments, have an important role in slowing the spread of diseases and protecting vulnerable students and staff, to help ensure students have safe and healthy learning environments. This guidance will help public and private child care programs, K-12 schools, and their partners understand how to help…

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) has a partnership with Questar Assessment Inc. (Questar) for the development of the 2020 Grades 3-8 English Language Arts Tests. Teachers from across the State work with NYSED in a variety of activities to ensure the validity and reliability of the New York State Testing Program (NYSTP). The 2020…

This article develops and tests an identity-based account of malfeasance in consumer markets. It is hypothesized that multi-brand organizational structures help predatory firms short-circuit reputational discipline by rendering their underlying identities opaque to consumer audiences. The analysis utilizes comprehensive administrative data on all…

The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to examine how novice special education teachers perceive administrative support during the first five years of teaching. This study was guided by the Cooperrider's appreciative inquiry (AI), and the Critical Systems theory (CST) conceptual framework. Purposeful sampling was used to select…

Mobile COLT is a portable platform for analysis of activities in the second language classroom, and is based on the well-known Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching (COLT) scheme (Spada & Fröhlich, 1995). It has been developed to facilitate real-time class analysis using a Windows tablet. This paper first describes the COLT analysis…

English Language Learner (EL) students in the district's two main bilingual programs (Transitional and Dual Language) are instructed in both English and Spanish. The relative amount of instruction in each language depends on both program and grade level. In the Transitional bilingual program, students receive primary language instruction for…

Teacher license reciprocity allows educators who hold a teaching license in one state to earn a license in another state, subject to meeting state-specific requirements. Reciprocity agreements allow states to work through variations in licensing systems to coordinate license transfers and fill vacant teaching positions with qualified candidates.…

Sacramento City Unified School District's (SCUSD) college and career readiness initiatives, as cited in the "2016-2021 Strategic Plan," only equip students with half of the skills and requirements necessary for graduates to succeed in their post-secondary options (Conley, 2012). Namely, SCUSD fails to assess critical soft skills, such as…

Student-centered pedagogies have become increasingly popular in higher education. Research on flipped learning, in particular, has shown that collaborative problem-solving environments are able to better support effective learning than lecture alone. However, the effects of this format on students' interests and motivations in chemistry remain…

Educating all students is the foundation of education. However, an epidemic is sweeping throughout America's schools that is threatening the very underpinning of our society. The number of students that leave school each year without a high school diploma is placing an immense personal and economic burden on the student, as well as the economic…