In 2002, No Child Left Behind ushered in sweeping changes in school accountability. Diverging from the federal government's long history of leaving this matter largely to the states, a Congress broadly dissatisfied with the slow pace of educational improvement stepped in with a new framework designed to set schools on a path to getting all…

Education leaders are re-examining acceptable use policies in light of the increasing use of highly mobile information technologies. While acceptable use policies were developed to manage and control behaviour, a digital citizenship policy takes a more comprehensive approach by recognizing the important role of education in preparing digital…

Each year, approximately 100,000 refugees arrive in the United States (Refugee Council USA). Nearly half of these arrivals are children. The number of refugees worldwide has more than sextupled since the 1950s, and according to the United States Committee for Refugees and immigrants (USCRI) this number is expected to continue to grow in coming…

Education Sector commissioned an earlier version of this collection of essays in conjunction with a March 2012 event "Getting to 2014: The Choices and Challenges Ahead." This updated version includes new essays and a revised introduction. The aim of these essays is to present ideas, elicit feedback, and encourage productive dialogue among…

Over the next few years, educators and policymakers have committed to implementing an array of challenging, but potentially transformative, reforms--reforms that could go beyond rearranging furniture to fundamentally restructuring and improving teaching and learning. Facing this much simultaneous change would be difficult even without the…

As a state legislator, you're well aware of the fiscal pressures that have caused many states to change their pension systems. But you should also be aware of the impact that pension reform has on public education. This brief guide shows you how and why pension programs affect your state's efforts to attract and retain the best teachers. It…

Instructional supports guide how academic standards are taught and translated into student learning. Teachers want a clear curricular framework, a rich array of teaching resources, and ideas for assignments that tap higher order thinking. As states implement new standards, they must simultaneously provide teachers with the tools to teach them…

Beth attends a New York City K-8, dual-language (Spanish/English) public school where 96% of the students qualify as low-income, based on participation in the federally funded lunch program. Early in Beth's 1st-grade year, she was classified as a struggling reader, based on district-wide assessments that identified academic deficits in such skill…

In 1887, Congress passed the Hatch Act, which formally established and provided a funding mechanism for agricultural experiment stations in each state and territory in the United States. The main purpose of agricultural experiment stations is to conduct agricultural research to meet the needs of the citizens of the United States. The objective of…

This report demonstrates how much low-income students must stretch to pay for college, even after grant aid is taken into account. This report finds that just five of the nation's nearly 1,200 four-year colleges and universities have student bodies that are at least 30 percent low-income and offer low-income students a reasonable chance at a…

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools were held almost exclusively accountable for absolute levels of student performance. But that meant that even schools that were making great strides with students were still labeled as "failing," just because the students had not yet made it all the way to a "proficient" level of achievement. As…

In the last year, the federal government has invested $3.5 billion dollars in an effort to fix the nation's bottom 5 percent of public schools. In the coming months, it will roll out another $546 million dollars to do the same. The School Improvement Grant (SIG) program is the largest pot of federal funds ever aimed at improving a discrete set of…

Public school districts in Buffalo, USA and Toronto, Canada reviewed their safe schools policies in 2008. Revised Codes of Conduct are compared to earlier versions and each other, and a conceptual policy web is used to understand how local, state/provincial, national, and international influences affect local safe school policies. The comparison…

Developing positive school climates and improving school discipline policies and practices are critical steps to raising academic achievement and supporting student success. However, there is no single formula for doing so. Rather, the growing body of research and best practices in the field should inform locally developed approaches to improving…

This paper explores the role that state spending on higher education capital outlays plays in state budgets by considering the functional form of the relationship between state spending on higher education capital outlays and four types of state expenditures. Three possible functional forms are tested: a linear model, a quadratic model, and the…