Education administrators expect teachers to participate in professional learning. Traditional professional learning for teachers comes in workshops, professional learning communities, meetings, conferences, self-guided professional development, coaching, and courses (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2014). Teachers are dissatisfied with this…

According to UNCF, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) represent just 3% of colleges and universities in the United States yet produce 20% of Black graduates. Their success is a model for innovative, student-centered success that deserves broader recognition. But what does the future of HBCUs look like given the increasing demand…

There are a number of ways that student investment can be measured, including full cost of attendance (COA, also known as sticker price), net price (COA minus grant aid), and opportunity costs in the form of forgone earnings. This paper explores those options and makes recommendations for how student investment should be measured with ideal data…

In 2018, The RAND Corporation and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) published an evaluation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching (IP) initiative, which was designed to improve achievement among low-income minority (LIM) students. The initiative provided support for several reforms that…

The author examined the websites of two large foundations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation. Each has developed projects and networks, coupled with substantive grants, to improve postsecondary education. These and other foundations have deep and ongoing commitments, not just philosophical but resource-based, to…

As part of its Partnership for Pre-K Improvement (PPI) initiative, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored the RAND Corporation to study the cost of high-quality pre-K programming. The RAND study included three states--Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington--that were partnering with the foundation under PPI. The objective of the study was to…

The Education-to-Workforce Indicator Framework (E-W Framework), commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and developed in partnership with leading experts representing more than 15 national and community organizations, is designed to encourage greater cross-sector collaboration and alignment across local, state, and national data…

In recent years, the Black Lives Matter movement, growing environmental challenges, a public health crisis, and pronounced political polarization, among other things, have shaped the normative assumptions of stakeholders about what should be measured in higher education. The recent work of the Postsecondary Value Commission, funded by the Bill…

A review of the literature reveals that low-income students encounter barriers to higher education. Common barriers include the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, n.d.; College Board 2010; Dwyer 2015; Feeney and Heroff 2013; Goldrick-Rab 2016; Nagaoka, Roderick and Coca 2009; Perez-Antonia 2016)…

Virtual learning and personalized learning have been at the forefront of education reform discussions for over a decade. Backed by almost $200 million philanthropic dollars from the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, the Gates Foundation, and others, Summit Public Schools has aggressively marketed its Summit Learning Platform to schools across the United…

Blended learning, which combines independent online work with in-person group sessions, can support educator development while promising time-savings, flexibility, learner autonomy, and ease of use -- all without sacrificing program quality. Indeed, two decades of peer-reviewed studies of in-person, online, and blended instruction have…

School leadership is broadly acknowledged to be the lynchpin for school success. Yet, amongst the countless demands that school leaders face, making wise leadership choices is increasingly challenging. On what should leaders focus their attention and how should they prioritize their improvement efforts? How can they identify, understand, and make…

Today's learners are looking to explore career options that allow them to change their communities and often the language used to communicate careers and skill-building falls short of connecting a career path with a learner's passion. Similarly, while employers are searching for ways to increase dedication and retention among employees while also…

Public education is becoming increasingly privatized as private philanthropic organizations, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and corporations, such as Pearson, dominate the policy-making process, and more students enroll in publicly funded but privately administered charter schools. The privatization of education results from the…

U.S. school districts have taken widely varied approaches to reopening public schools for the 2020-2021 school year. The divergence stems from the highly localized approach to both schooling and addressing the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and differences in COVID-19 transmission rates among communities. To develop a national…