Are parents an untapped resource in improving and reimagining K-12 education in Kansas City? What do they think would enhance student learning and what are they willing to do to help their children get the education they deserve? These are among the questions explored in an in-depth survey of 1,566 parents with children now in public school in the…

Members of Generation Y (those born between 1977 and 1995) have been characterized as creative, innovative, self-confident, highly educated, and educationally minded. They like to share what they've learned in small groups and are dissatisfied with workplaces that are technologically inferior. They have a strong moral drive to make a difference in…

As a new decade dawns, teachers stand at the center of a policy vortex. They serve as the primary focus of one of the Obama administration's four pillars of educational reform--effective teachers and leaders. Educational reformers of all stripes have focused tremendous energy on thinking of ways to identify effective teachers and in turn recruit,…

This study details parents' and students' current thinking about math, science and technology (MST) education and their satisfaction with the existing curriculum which most experts see as vastly below world-class standards. The study finds just 25% of Kansas/Missouri parents think their children should be studying more math and science; 70% think…

This report is the third in a series of "Reality Check" reports finds that five years into the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act and over a dozen years into the so-called standards movement in American education, the public now sees these reforms as "necessary, but not sufficient." This is consistent across a number of indicators…

This is the fourth in a series of reports from Reality Check 2006, an ongoing set of tracking surveys on education issues. Reality Check surveys attitudes among public school parents, students, teachers, principals and superintendents on a regular basis. In surveys on education, it is not uncommon for the public, parents and teachers to see…