The Summer and Afterschool Needs Assessment helps youth serving programs and organizations learn best practices and identify areas where they might benefit from guidance or support. The Needs Assessment draws from the best available evidence on what constitutes high-quality afterschool and summer learning programs and organizes these Success…

The American Rescue Plan Act's Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ARP ESSER) fund represent a historic investment in ensuring that all students have access to safe in-person instruction and in meeting the social, emotional, mental health, and academic needs of the Nation's students. The U.S. Department of Education is committed to…

The rapid expansion of computer science (CS) instruction in primary and secondary education has highlighted the shortage of teachers qualified to teach the subject. A key strategy for building CS teaching capacity has been preparing teachers of other subjects (e.g., math, technology applications, business) to teach introductory CS through…

Formative assessment can be a powerful tool to support effective K-12 computer science (CS) instruction. Having teachers and students engage with the formative assessment process can increase student engagement and improve learning outcomes. In this guide, the authors show readers how to apply the five-step process outlined in the corresponding…

The COVID-19 pandemic has created disruptions in the teacher workforce, including reductions-in-force due to budget cuts, hesitation from teachers to return in-person to the classroom, and relaxed standards for entering the profession. Even before the current pandemic, teacher hiring decisions were often late, rushed, and information-poor.…

While finding interventions with proven effectiveness has become easier through resources like the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), identifying what works for diverse student populations can still be challenging. Knowing the context, specifically, sample demographics for research, can help bridge this gap. In a recent scan of studies that met WWC…

The disappointing results of the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress--a dip in trajectory of reading proficiency for all students except those at the highest level of ability--are prompting states to consider new reading-related policies and actions. In "State Policy Levers for Improving Literacy," Barbara Foorman describes…

For nearly three decades, charter schools have provided families with a public school alternative to traditional district schools, but they have not been without controversy. Charter schools often come under fire for "privatizing" education, for "creaming" the best students, or for taking money from district schools. The…

The National Comprehensive Center's (NCC's) Native Education Collaborative developed resources to build the capacity of state education agencies (SEAs) in collaboration with tribes and local education agencies (LEAs) to enhance the learning lives of Native children and youth. The Native Education Collaborative developed the Circles of Reflection…

"Leading Thoughtful Conversations about School-by-School Spending Data" is a product of a federally-funded study to support the US Department of Education and the field more broadly to understand what data visualizations work to fuel thoughtful conversation among district and school leaders on financial strategy and management. This…

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced school leaders to make difficult decisions about how to balance students' educational needs with the health, safety, and social-emotional well-being of students and teachers. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Rescue Plan) recently enacted by Congress offers unprecedented amounts of potentially transformative…

The impact of a year of remote or hybrid learning on students across the nation has been significant. Early research points to the disruptions to in-person learning experienced in school year 2020-21 could result in students losing between 3 and 11 months of learning. Many students have experienced additional trauma during COVID-19 including lack…

In this first of three whitepapers on designing curricula for diversity, the authors explain why equity and inclusion should be addressed in standardized curriculum materials and introduce the Equity and Inclusion Framework for Curriculum Design (EI-CD). [For Part 2, see ED615694. For Part 3, see ED615695.]

This is the second of three whitepapers on designing curricula for diversity. It provides the step-by-step process for using the Equity and Inclusion for Curriculum Design (EI-CD). Additionally, it describes how the framework can be used to design and adapt STEM+CS [science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computer science] curriculum…

This is the third whitepaper in the National Comprehensive Center's series on designing curricula for diversity. It provides state and local education leaders recommendations on the use of the Equity and Inclusion Framework for Curriculum Development in the design and adaptation of STEM+CS [science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and…