Despite the popularity of Career and Technical Education (CTE), concerns remain about the availability of resources for different CTE pathways, their relative status, and the degree to which adults working within schools are problematically sorting students explicitly or implicitly into different course-taking pathways. This brief examines the…

Schools are implementing Restorative Justice in Education (RJE) initiatives across the United States, often to reduce the use of out-of-school suspension, which is known to increase the risk for dropout and arrest. Many RJE initiatives also aim to strengthen social and emotional competencies, reduce gender and racial disparities in discipline, and…

A major new financial phenomenon has appeared within the social services arena, with corresponding legislation poised to change how social services are delivered and who delivers them. While different programs use different terms--including, for example, Pay for Success (PFS) or Results-Based Financing (RBF)--the umbrella term encompassing all…

There is a near unanimity among researchers and practitioners about the need to recruit and retain more teachers of color. Diversification of the teaching ranks has clear benefits. This brief contends that the push for diversifying the teaching force must be scrutinized within the context of larger patterns and structures of racial injustice, and…

School districts around the country have launched new reform strategies that are designed to expand autonomy for public schools, often called "Innovation Schools." Pursuant to these state- and local-level plans to create more autonomous schools, school leaders are granted greater amounts of authority over school operations such as…

The COVID-19 pandemic has given the entire country a crash course in virtual education and digital education platforms. School leaders have been forced to consider a set of very imperfect options as they struggle to reopen their schools. This three-brief collection identifies key issues for school leaders to consider before adopting a digital…

Personalized learning programs are proliferating in schools across the United States, fueled by philanthropic dollars, tech industry lobbying, marketing by third-party vendors, and a policy environment that provides little guidance and few constraints. In this research brief, authors Faith Boninger, Alex Molnar, and Christopher M. Saldaña consider…

As proponents continue to make the case that virtual education can expand student choices and improve the efficiency of public education, full-time virtual schools have attracted a great deal of attention. Advocates contend that this potential for individualization allows virtual schools to promote greater student achievement than can be realized…

Today's challenges for special education funding are rooted in a complex regulatory and policy environment that reflects little forethought about who can and will pay special education costs. Despite the fact that states and school districts are legally required to ensure a free and appropriate public education to students with disabilities, the…

This research brief investigates state fiscal powers over districts, providing the necessary foundation for policymakers and researchers to understand how states might best address districts' financial conduct and difficulties going forward. The authors consider ways that the state statutes provide the bases and means for state intervention into…

Recent reports on discrimination in private schools have led some observers to decry the fact that private and charter schools receiving public tax dollars selectively exclude some populations from both employment and enrollment; others, however, note that in these and similar instances the schools have broken no laws. Both may be right. How can…

Measures of socioeconomic status (SES) are widely used in educational research and policy applications, in large part due to overwhelming evidence linking SES to student achievement. SES is usually conceptualized as an unobservable factor--a construct--measured using variables such as parental education, occupation, income/wealth, and home…

This sixth NEPC Annual Report on Virtual Education provides a detailed overview and inventory of full-time virtual schools and blended learning, or hybrid, schools. Full-time virtual schools deliver all curriculum and instruction via the Internet and electronic communication, usually asynchronously with students at home and teachers at a remote…

Federally mandated standardized testing (i.e., in core subject areas and certain grade levels), as an element of educational accountability, began in 2002 with the No Child Left Behind Act. With that step, large-scale assessments came to serve as one of the foundations of accountability-based systems and policies not only for districts, schools…

Arguably the most strongly promoted approach by voucher advocates is a new form of government subsidy for private education, Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). Parents are provided a set sum which they can use for a variety of educational services including private school tuition and fees, online courses, extracurricular activities and private…