Despite the myriad of challenges that families, students, teachers and policymakers faced in 2021, the momentum to transform education did not waver. New opportunities for students unfolded in more than a dozen states through expanded private and public school choice. An additional 1.7 million students gained eligibility for private choice alone,…

Focused on educational quality, innovation and opportunity--both within and outside of the traditional system--ExcelinEd advances a broad range of student-centered policy solutions that are successfully: (1) increasing student learning; (2) Readying graduates for college and career; and (3) Advancing equity. This year's annual report highlights…

A full year of progress in advancing education reform across America is documented in each of the Foundation for Excellence in Education's Annual Reports. This report presents the broad range of initiatives that the Foundation for Excellence in Education is working on--policies that personalize the learning experience for students, that challenge…

"Childhood Programs and Practices in the First Decade of Life" presents research findings on the effects of early childhood programs and practices in the first decade of life and their implications for policy development and reform. Leading scholars in the multidisciplinary field of human development and in early childhood learning…

Central to the Public School Forum of North Carolina's mission is the imperative to ensure that all students in North Carolina have equitable access to a meaningful, high quality education through a strong system of public schools. It is important to note that equitable does not mean equal. Achieving equitable access to high quality education for…

The Public School Forum of North Carolina is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on improving educational outcomes for all North Carolina children. As they do each year, they have released a list of the "Top 10 Education Issues" they believe will be the top issues for the year, as well as issues they believe should be on the…

The Public School Forum of North Carolina has a long history of tackling difficult problems facing public education in the state. Study Group XVI asks: What would it take to give every child in North Carolina the opportunity to receive a sound basic education? The challenges of poverty, racial isolation, and trauma are huge hurdles that require…

A significant body of research exists on the development of early literacy skills and their relationship to the development of literacy as a whole. Phonological awareness, orthographic processing, rapid automatized naming, phonological memory, and receptive vocabulary have all been shown to be predictive of early reading outcome measures. What is…

As debate continues around the development and adoption of common standards in English and mathematics, several states are independently wrestling with rewrites of standards in a content area largely absent from that national discussion--social studies--and encountering their own shares of controversy. Flash points in the social studies debates…

In partnership with the John M. Belk Endowment, MDC has researched and written the report, "North Carolina's Economic Imperative: Building an Infrastructure of Opportunity," part of our work with the endowment to study, address, and propose solutions for the low mobility rate of too many North Carolinians. The report examines patterns of…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLBA) focused attention on the academic achievement of more than 5 million students with limited English proficiency. Obtaining valid test results for these students is challenging, given their language barriers. This testimony describes: (1) the extent to which these students are meeting annual academic…

This report outlines the national and state environmental context for the SECCS Initiative in supporting MCH strategic planning in early childhood systems building. This strategic context has implications for roles, relationships, and activities within a planning process and ultimately an implementation process. It summarizes the opportunities and…

American students test poorly in mathematics compared to those in other developed--and in some cases, less developed--countries. While we have seen some signs of improved performance in recent years, these improvements are not yet evident among high school students. And the proportion of new college graduates who majored in math-intensive subjects…

The "No Child Left Behind" Act (2002) requires that all students have access to the general curriculum at their designated grade level. Federal guidance received from the US Department of Education noted that these extended standards are intended only for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. A key goal is to assure…

In a state (North Carolina, 2006) that once pushed foreign language lessons as early as kindergarten, there has been a steady curtailing of instruction in second languages to devote more time and effort to basic reading and math instruction in English, two subjects heavily tested under the state's ABCs and federal No Child Left Behind…