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A large share of Wisconsin's 400+ school districts are rural, and nearly half of all students enrolled in public schools statewide attend rural schools. Persistent challenges faced by rural districts in attracting and retaining educators, however, are contributing to an increasingly dire situation for the state's rural communities. This report summarizes findings from a yearlong research project investigating strategies being used by rural districts to address educator shortages, including a diverse set of "grow your own" (GYO) initiatives which involve school districts working with educator preparation programs (EPPs) and other local partners to identify, recruit, and prepare local candidates to become educators. The mixed-methods research design draws upon two statewide surveys (of rural superintendents and local site coordinators of the Educators Rising GYO program), along with site visits to five rural districts, to accomplish two main goals: (1) to identify strategies being used by rural districts to attract, recruit, and hire teachers; and (2) to describe the landscape of GYO initiatives being utilized by rural Wisconsin districts and local partners to address educator shortages. Broadly speaking, the work suggests that rural school districts are not waiting on state or federal policymakers to solve longstanding staffing challenges for them, but instead are actively engaged in implementing a mix of national GYO programs such as Educators Rising and "homegrown" GYO initiatives as one solution to chronic educator shortages. Not surprisingly, a distinct set of both successes and challenges have emerged as rural districts attempt to implement, launch, sustain, and scale up GYO initiatives that meet their needs. [Paper's original version August 2023; revised version September 2023. This work was made possible by a research grant from UW-Madison's Tommy G. Thompson Center for Public Leadership.]

To comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 and related U.S. Department of Education peer review guidance, state education agencies must provide evidence demonstrating clear alignment (technically referred to as correspondence) between their K-12 English language proficiency standards and their academic content standards. This technical paper provides evidence of match, breadth, consistency [balance of representation], and depth of correspondence between WIDA consortium member state academic content standards in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies, as of Fall 2022, and the components of the WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework, 2020 Edition--specifically the four WIDA Key Language Uses and their grade-level cluster and content area instantiation in the WIDA Language Expectations. It also illustrates the relationship between the grade-level cluster Language Expectations and Proficiency Level 5 of the Proficiency Level Descriptors. State correspondence evidence helps ensure that K-12 students identified as English learners (referred to as multilingual learners by WIDA) have the opportunity to learn the critical elements of language that facilitate access to and achievement of academic content. [For the summary report, see ED631052.]

The growth of homeschooling from a somewhat fringe movement during the 1970s and 1980s to a more widespread and socially accepted approach in recent decades has provided a strong foundation of flexible learning models. When Florida's school choice expansion, House Bill 1, was introduced in January 2023, one of its goals was to allow more homeschoolers to participate in the education savings account (ESA) program. But many homeschoolers and homeschool advocacy groups balked at the proposal. Having worked hard to achieve independence, they were loath to be linked to government funding. Even if the program were optional, they feared that associated regulations would eventually extend to traditional homeschoolers. In the end, the bill passed with new language that satisfied traditional homeschoolers by creating a new option for parents to educate their children at home. As states continue to enact and expand education savings accounts, Colleen Hroncich argues that it is crucial that policymakers craft bills in a way that maximizes freedom and minimizes roadblocks.

This paper relates how leaders of a higher education program, the Wisconsin Collaborative Education Research Network, sparked and managed innovation across communities of scholarship, research, and practice. This paper uses a "design narrative" method to describe how leaders orchestrated organizational change by bringing diverse communities together into research-practice partnerships. The narrative uses the idea of "boundary objects" to describe how initiatives were progressively developed to create more inclusive spaces for sustained innovation. The insights and the capacity that resulted from initial design efforts created a richer space for subsequent initiatives. The paper shows how design narratives can illustrate the role that boundary objects can play in organizational change and concludes with a discussion of the role that leaders can play in creating inclusive cultures of innovation in higher education.

The Exploring Making Through Mobile Emergent Technologies (EMMET) program sought to disrupt the trajectory from rural high school to factory floor by introducing STEM and computational thinking (STEM+C) skills through mentorship training and hands-on activities involving creative production--often referred to as "making." The program also bridged the divide between formal school science education and informal opportunities for science learning outside of school--a division that has marginalized young people from science class and devalued everyday science experiences (Stocklmayer et al., 2010). The overall project focused on designing maker experiences, training local high school students as "maker-mentors" for their community, developing partnerships with area community-based organizations, and researching what program participants learn about STEM and computational thinking. The work described in this white paper offers a model for regions with distributed, rural populations to build capacity for young people to develop skills and self-efficacy in STEM+C fields. This paper aims to answer the following questions: (1) How are rural communities impacted by mobile making experiences that involve community mentors as instructors? (2) What do maker-mentors learn as a result of their participation in facilitating mobile making experiences? and (3) What aspects of the community-involved maker experiences are sustained beyond institutional intervention? [This paper was written with contributions from Tim Fetting, Vicki Jeppesen, and Darren Ackley.]

Past research demonstrates the degree to which extracurricular activities, paid work, and major family responsibilities impinge on student academic trajectories. Largely absent from this body of work is consideration of the ways in which schools and teachers mitigate the adverse consequences of out-of-school obligations and choices on academic outcomes. In this paper, we seek to understand when, and for whom, teachers and administrators exercise their power to accommodate students' out-of-school time commitments. Analyzing 61 interviews with teachers and staff at five high schools that serve predominantly low-income students and survey responses from teachers across the state (N=601), we assess how teachers describe student responsibilities and accommodate student responsibilities outside of school. We identify the ways teachers portray the classed nature of different student responsibilities and the kinds of solutions they provide to help resolve the tensions between student responsibilities and academic life. We find that school staff describe a range of student responsibilities and identify these responsibilities as connected to students' social-class status. Teacher responses to student responsibilities are largely individual and ad hoc. When administrators report addressing the impacts of student responsibilities through structural change, this change often specifically centers students' paid work (usually intensive paid work that contributes to family finances) while neglecting other types of responsibilities (such as caregiving).

This report presents a snapshot of selected features of the condition of education in Wisconsin in 2019. With support from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences, and in collaboration with colleagues at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), the authors set out to measure practices in PK-12 education that they considered especially important for educational equity and success for children in Wisconsin. Public school teachers and administrators in Wisconsin are responsible for educating about 855,000 students between four-year-old kindergarten and twelfth grade. State report cards produced annually by the Wisconsin DPI show how well we are doing as a school system with respect to student outcomes. In this paper, we focus on what principals and teachers in the state are doing. How do kindergarten teachers at both the four-year-old and five-year-old levels engage in play in their classrooms? How do elementary teachers group students for instruction and how frequently do they reconsider these groupings? What sorts of educational opportunities do teachers and schools offer their English language learners and their students with special needs? How supported do teachers feel in their early years in the profession? These are just a few of the questions we asked a representative sample of almost 700 principals and 2,200 teachers in the state. This paper offers a big picture view of instructional practice and educational opportunity in Wisconsin. It makes no claims about what schools and teachers should do to increase equity and success for students in Wisconsin. Instead, it shines a light on the many ways our educators work to support students in the state and, we hope, offers insights into where we might do better.

The outlook for high school graduates who have no postsecondary or industry-recognized credentials can appear bleak. Today, it is critical that young people obtain at least some training beyond high school to succeed in the job market. States bear a cost, too, when this is not achieved: They have a less skilled workforce to attract business investment and must allocate limited federal and state resources to more social services for their unemployed and underemployed youth. That is why governors are considering youth apprenticeship to connect more young people to career paths at an earlier age, while at the same time filling businesses' unmet workforce needs. Youth apprenticeship offers paid, hands-on work experience and related classroom instruction that result in postsecondary or industry-recognized credentials. Youth apprenticeship programs often remain underused, especially in high-growth, white-collar industries, but governors are exploring ways to guide development and expansion of these programs. This white paper explores three strategies that governors can use to expand youth apprenticeship: (1) Act as a public champion by setting a statewide vision and convening stakeholders to collaboratively implement that vision; (2) Allocate and use dedicated funding to start and expand programs that support youth apprentices and guide them through their career pathways; and (3) Implement policies that provide long-term support for high-quality youth apprenticeship programs. The governors of Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland and North Carolina have used these strategies to successfully develop and expand youth apprenticeship in their states. These states are highlighted in the case studies presented in this paper, which offer insights to inform other governors' efforts to expand youth apprenticeship and further connect high school education to workforce preparation and high-quality employment opportunities.

Although policymakers generally appreciate the value of crafting policies that are responsive to teacher and principal voice, doing so in a systematic way is challenging. Educator voices in the room when policies are made are often those of teachers and principals closest to policymakers. In 2019, to broaden the range of educator voices available to policymakers in Wisconsin, we asked more than 2,200 teachers and 700 principals in public schools in Wisconsin how "they" would change policy to improve the academic success of economically disadvantaged students. In total, 1,559 teachers and 601 principals offered suggestions for changing policy across four categories: school level--academic, student level, school level--non-academic, and community level. Though we saw variation in responses based on percent of student body eligible for free and reduced-priced lunch, grade levels served (elementary, middle, high school) and community type (city, suburb, town, rural), many responses appear with similar frequency among practitioners across contexts--indicating promise for making broader changes that impact all schools.

The mission of the University of Wisconsin System is to provide Wisconsin's high school graduates with opportunities to cultivate "intellectual, cultural, and humane sensitivities, scientific, professional and technological expertise, and a sense of purpose." Further, as part of its 2020 strategic plan to meet state workforce needs, the System seeks to increase the number of Wisconsinites who both start college and persist to earn their degree. To reach these goals, high school graduates must first apply for admission to the UW System's two- or four-year institutions. This report analyzes application patterns among Wisconsin high school students who earned their high school diploma in 2016. We find that, among students with similar high school grades and ACT scores, Black students are more likely to apply to a UW System school (and to UW-Madison in particular) than otherwise similar non-Hispanic White students. Economically disadvantaged students and students from rural school districts, on the other hand, are less likely to apply to a UW System school or to UW-Madison, though differences are relatively modest in magnitude. If Wisconsin wants to increase equity in who applies to our public colleges and universities, we suggest targeting outreach to academically successful students eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch, and those attending rural high schools.

Internships are widely promoted extra-curricular experiences that can have positive impacts on student outcomes, yet how specific elements of internships contribute to these outcomes and facilitate learning is understudied. In this sequential mixed-methods study, we use sociocultural learning theory to interpret data from surveys (n = 435) and focus groups (n = 52) with students at five postsecondary institutions. After stepwise linear regression analyses indicated that supervisor behaviors were significantly associated with intern satisfaction and career development, analyses of qualitative data revealed features of positive (clear communication, availability, feedback) and negative (unavailability, inattention to learning) aspects of supervision. These results highlight the value of legitimate peripheral participation in internships, and the need for colleges and employers to carefully design and monitor these pedagogic spaces.

By coupling statewide vacancy/application records with administrative data, we find that activity on the teacher labor market is substantially greater than previously documented, with 53% of novice teachers searching for new positions after their first year and 27% changing schools or leaving the public system. The empirical evidence favors preference alignment theory, showing that first-year teachers are more likely to reenter the labor market after their first year when their preferences and their current employment context diverge. This finding is particularly true for the individuals with a preference for a suburban locale and for school and student characteristics, such as the proportion of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. Once an individual has initiated a job search, preference alignment appears to be unrelated to subsequent mobility. The findings suggest that processes that can facilitate a stronger initial match of novice teachers to their desired employment situations may help mitigate turnover in the following year.

Although numerous studies confirm the importance of school principals, schools often experience high turnover rates and principal shortage. However, we know little about the staffing challenges in rural schools and what promotes applicants to apply for and be hired for principalship. In partnership with the Wisconsin Education Career Access Network, we examine the principal labor dynamics in rural schools using statewide job-openings and application information in Wisconsin. We find that all rural communities--"rural fringe," "rural distant," and "rural remote"--receive equal or high number of applications compared to urban districts. Female candidates are significantly less likely to apply to rural districts, while working in the same district is a considerable advantage to being hired. Among district characteristics, the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch tends to reduce the number of applicants in rural schools. Our results highlight the need for policies that are better attuned to the subtle differences in rural contexts.

This study introduces a new approach to measure effectiveness of teacher preparation programs at U.S. universities (TPP) by examining to what extent TPPs produce employable teacher candidates. We use teacher application data in Wisconsin public schools from 2014-15 through 2016-17. We find that attending a specific university's TPP makes a difference for novice teacher applicants' job outcomes. However, the competitiveness of a TPP is inextricable from the geographic locale in which it operates. These findings call into question the validity of a contextual and absolute TPP rankings. Our results suggest that graduates of TPPs with strong school and community partnerships are more competitive in the local labor market.

Internships are widely perceived as a "high-impact practice" that opens the doors of opportunity for college students, yet little is known about obstacles to participation. Instead, educators and employers too often view participation as unproblematic, with many postsecondary institutions beginning to mandate internships for graduation in many colleges and universities. This study reports findings from surveys (n = 1,549) and focus groups (n= 100) with students at five diverse postsecondary institutions that include a community college, a Historically Black College and University, and three comprehensive universities. Results indicate that 64% of students who did not take internships had in fact wanted to, but could not due to intersecting obstacles that include the need to work at a full- or part-time job, heavy course loads, and a lack of opportunities in their disciplines. First-generation students were more likely to report needing to work, Arts & Humanities students were more likely to report insufficient pay and heavy course loads, and full-time students were least likely to report insufficient pay. Given the financial, structural, and even spatial forces that inhibit the ability of many college students to pursue and then complete an internship, we argue that postsecondary institutions should not mandate or advocate for internships until and unless they address these obstacles to internship participation. Ultimately, colleges and universities must work to ensure that internships do not reproduce privilege and exacerbate inequality.

Internships are a widely touted co-curricular activity that may enhance students' employability, their future wages, and employer talent needs. However, how students themselves understand and conceptualize the internship experience is poorly understood. Reasons why understanding students' perceptions of internships is important include the fact that debates about employability are dominated by employer voices and interests, and that developing student-centered educational experiences require a deep understanding of their conceptions of the learning and developmental process itself. In this paper we adopt an ethnographic perspective to reposition the perspectives of students from the periphery to the center within discussions of employability and internships, and use the freelisting method to document the words or phrases that are most salient to students (n=57) as they consider the cultural domain of "internships." We analyzed the resulting data using saliency analysis, inductive thematic analysis, and techniques from social network analysis to document the most frequently and psychologically salient reported terms associated with internships, themes related to these terms, and differences between students who have and who have not taken an internship. Results indicate that the most salient terms in the cultural domain of internships were: "experience," "learning," "paid," and "connections." Students discussed these words in utilitarian terms (e.g., something to "get" for one's résumé), as important aspects of career- and self-exploration, and to highlight the importance of compensation. Differences in the complexity of student accounts were evident between students who had taken an internship and those who had not. These findings highlight how common definitions of internships reflect a homogenous and aspirational perspective that is inconsistent with student accounts. We conclude that students' insights about internships are important to consider to reframe the employability debate to include student interests, to avoid one-size-fits-all approaches to internship design, and to facilitate student self-reflection.

Teacher collaboration is a key factor in improving instructional quality and promoting student achievement. Though research attests to the importance of school contextual elements for the work of teachers, few studies investigate how these factors interact to enable or constrain collaboration. This study examines teacher perspectives on collaborative practices by analyzing observations and interviews of teachers and other staff at eight Wisconsin elementary schools. It finds that structures for collaboration shape teacher participation in collaborative practices. The authors distinguish among three structures of collaboration--requisite, optional, and informal--and explore how relational trust among teachers and between teachers and their administrators and colleagues affects collaboration. They find that teachers who attested to the presence of relational trust within their schools collaborated with colleagues, regardless of formalized times to do so. Conversely, teachers who described a lack of relational trust opted against collaborating with grade-level colleagues, despite, in some instances, having access to collaborative planning time. Instructional approaches influenced collaborative structures and relational trust, as some teaching formats fostered contact between practitioners while others separated teachers. The study concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for extant and future research regarding collaboration in context.

Major teacher evaluation changes have occurred across the nation during the past decade. Pressed by federal education initiatives and encouraged by research on promising teacher evaluation practices, states and school districts have implemented evaluation systems using new measures of educator practice and student learning. A growing body of research has examined teacher evaluation policies and related impacts. Relatively less research focuses on the roles of principals, teachers, coaches, and peers. Wisconsin adopted a system for educator evaluation that includes common measures, similar training requirements, and an emphasis on educator growth and development. The evaluation of the Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness System has provided informative state, district and school reports on teacher and principal perceptions of the system. There is much to learn, however, about how schools are carrying out evaluation practices to support educator improvement. This report presents findings from the Learning-Centered Evaluation Study carried out during the 2017-2018 school year. We examine school-level educator effectiveness practices and outcomes within Wisconsin districts focusing evaluation efforts on educator improvement rather than accountability. The report provides background on the system development in Wisconsin, summarizes our study design, and presents findings on learning-centered practices and observations on how evaluation affects teaching. The report includes a policy response from the study sponsor and thoughts on future studies. [The study is part of the evaluation and research agenda of the Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness Research Partnership.]

This study develops, validates, and applies a typology of teachers using labor market data. We construct our typology by applying a correlated topic model to 17,000 personal statements teachers submitted as part of their applications to open positions in Wisconsin public schools. We identify seven types of teachers active on the labor market: Inclusivists, Idealists, Nurturers, Generalists, Classroom Experts, Guides, and External Experts. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, we explore trends within and among types as well as demographic relationships and labor market behaviors. This research provides novel insights into the philosophies, mission, vision, and values of teachers; links these characteristics to teachers' job market preferences; and provides a sound psychometric foundation for these measures of teacher type to be applied in subsequent research.

Representative bureaucracy suggests that supervisors are representative of their employees based, in part, on shared values and identity. In education, we often observe representative asymmetries among school principals and the teaching faculty, particularly by race. This study explores the ways in which race congruence (or incongruence) between teachers and principals relates to key labor market behaviors, in particular, job searching, changing, applying, and hiring. Using an unprecedented and large-scale vacancy-application database coupled with administrative staffing records in Wisconsin, this study demonstrates that representative bureaucracy based on race operates at the stages of job searching and applying. The congruence effect is only notable for Minoritized teachers at the hiring stage, while White teachers show a greater effect when changing positions. Comparing the differences in marginal probabilities by racial combinations, we conclude race congruence effects are greatest for Minoritized teachers.

When does a community create and sustain a truly innovative "next generation" high school that not only remains innovative, but also relevant? According to the Carnegie Corporation, this means seizing the opportunity to redesign schools to promote personalized learning. So far, much work has gone into retooling many of these (reform) elements individually. Many states, districts, and schools have made essential progress in changing teacher preparation and professional development to help talented educators enter and stay in the classroom. There have also been pushes for interventions like additional learning time, new curricula, and new technology, much of which has been shown to have a significant impact on student achievement. However, applied individually, each of these fails to get schools and school systems where they need to be to serve every student. This white paper will explore the issues through the perspectives of several members of the Atlantic Rim Collaboratory, who are attempting to share ideas and concepts on system redesign, by examples of schools that are making deep learning a priority through technology and by examples of initiatives and schools that have made personalized learning and mastery the focus of what they do. All these approaches are important for they become part of a comprehensive whole that can drive meaningful change. [For "Innovation and Deeper Learning: Model High Schools," see ED604591.]

Roughly one in five American adults, or approximately 53 million people, live with some type of disability, and their unemployment and poverty rates are nearly double the rates of people without disabilities. Labor force participation for people with disabilities is just 20.2 percent--less than a third of the rate of participation among people without disabilities. However, this is often not by choice. At least two-thirds of people with disabilities are striving to work, whether they are already working and want more hours or are unemployed and looking for work. Many who do find work face limited opportunities and are likely to earn less. For example, a worker with a disability who has a high school diploma earns $6,505 less per year than his or her peers without disabilities. The National Governors Association hosted a learning lab on May 9-10, 2018, in Madison, Wisconsin, titled "Building Inclusive Talent Pipelines for People with Disabilities." Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Indiana and Maryland were selected to participate in the learning lab, where they learned about Wisconsin's successes and shared best practices with one another and leading subject matter experts. This paper describes strategies that emerged as best practices in participating states and other states across the country highlighted during the learning lab.

With the increasing price tag of college and rising student debt, the employability of graduates is a dominant narrative shaping postsecondary policy and practice. Yet, completion and the acquisition of a credential alone does not guarantee employment, and research on hiring reveals its subjective aspects, particularly when cultural signals of applicants are matched to those of organizations. In this qualitative study of 42 manufacturing firms, the prevalence of hiring for cultural fit is examined using thematic and social network methods to analyze the interviews that were conducted. Results indicate that 74% of employers hire for cultural fit, but, contrary to prior research, this matching process is not simply a matter of fitting applicant personalities to monolithic "organizational cultures" or interviewer preferences. Instead, employers match diverse applicant "dispositions" (e.g., personality, attitude) and "competencies" (e.g., cognitive, interpersonal, intrapersonal) to the personalities of existing staff as well as to industry-specific norms that are dominant within specific departments. The paper discusses implications of these findings for college students, faculty, and career advisors, especially in light of the potential for discriminatory practices during the job search and hiring process.

In Wisconsin, racial disparities in K-12 achievement have taken center stage, and justifiably so: the black-white and Hispanic-white test score gap is wider in Wisconsin than in any other state (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, 2014). However, Wisconsin also sees inequality along economic lines and disparities in postsecondary outcomes, both of which warrant attention. If Wisconsin is like the rest of the nation, closing its gaps in academic achievement is not sufficient to equalize educational attainment. Nationally and in Wisconsin, economically disadvantaged high school graduates attend college, especially baccalaureate colleges, at much lower rates than their more advantaged peers. Schools play an important role in helping economically disadvantaged students go to college. In this report, the authors describe Wisconsin's economic disparities by postsecondary outcomes, assess the magnitude of between-school variation in school effects on economically disadvantaged students' baccalaureate college attendance, and show which school characteristics explain this variation. To determine which types of schools are more successful in sending economically disadvantaged students to baccalaureate colleges, this study uses a relatively dense set of student-level and school-level characteristics. The authors draw these data from the population of Wisconsin public school students who entered ninth grade for the first time between the 2006-07 and 2011-12 school years. Three principal questions guide this study: (1) How large are economic disparities in college attendance in Wisconsin?; (2) How much variation is there among high schools in the share of their low-income students who attend college, controlling for student characteristics?; and (3) Which high school characteristics explain this between-school variation? The questions are approached using the Wisconsin State Longitudinal Data System, the National Student Clearinghouse, and the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data. This report proceeds in six sections. First, the authors describe their data sources and measurement strategies. Second, they show the magnitude of economic disparities in postsecondary outcomes in Wisconsin. Third, they demonstrate that school effects vary widely. Fourth, they present estimates of how specific school-level characteristics influence low-income students' postsecondary outcomes, highlighting the importance of geographic characteristics such as location in a suburb, proximity to a University of Wisconsin (UW) 4-year campus, and the education level of adults in the district. Fifth, they examine facets of school organization. Finally, the authors offer concluding comments.

Research indicates that teamwork, communication, self-directed learning, and problem-solving skills are strongly linked to individual academic and professional success, yet little is known regarding how college educators and employer trainers learn to better teach or train others in these valuable skills in postsecondary and employment STEM contexts. This pilot study uses social network analysis--a research perspective studying relationships or "social ties" to better understand the ways interactions influence behavior--to explore the dimensions of educator and trainer discussions regarding methods for helping students or employees acquire important skills. The study also examines whether educators and employers believe such discussions influence their instruction. A descriptive analysis of data from online surveys collected from educators (n=192) and employers (n=70) in technology and manufacturing fields in southern Wisconsin and western New York indicates respondents frequently engage in such teaching- and training-focused discussions with people inside and outside their colleges and businesses. Though more college educators are involved in such conversations than employers, employer trainers who engage in such conversations do so with individuals affiliated with more diverse organizations. Results also indicate that educators and employers who have these discussions do so at a similar frequency. Finally, most educators and employers with teaching- and training-focused social networks perceive them to be beneficial to their teamwork, communication, self-directed learning, and problem-solving instruction. In light of these findings, leaders hoping to further develop teaching- and training-focused social networks in education and employment fields may find more success in openly promoting the importance of such social ties as well as providing more opportunities for intra- and interorganizational professional development in instruction.

This paper studies teacher attrition in Wisconsin following Act 10, a policy change which severely weakened teachers' unions and capped wage growth for teachers. I document a sharp increase in turnover after the Act was passed, driven almost entirely by the exit of older teachers, who faced strong incentives to retire before the end of pre-existing collective bargaining agreements. I find that student academic performance increased in grades with teachers who retired following the reform, and I obtain similar results when instrumenting for retirement using the pre-existing age distribution of teachers. Differences in value-added between retirees and their replacements can potentially explain some, but not all, of the observed academic improvements.

A number of English language proficiency exams target grades K-12 English language learners (ELLs) because of the rising need to identify their needs and provide appropriate support in language learning. A good example is the WIDA ACCESS for ELLs (hereafter ACCESS), designed to measure the English language proficiency of students identified as ELLs. Every year approximately two million K-12 ELLs in the WIDA Consortium take ACCESS. After students complete the exam, score reports are provided to relevant stakeholders, including teachers and parents of the students. Because score reports are widely used by stakeholders for many purposes (e.g., placement, reclassification of ELLs), it is necessary to understand how they are interpreted and used in educational and home settings. Such information could be used to understand the usefulness of score reports and also to enhance their quality. However, there is little research on stakeholders' interpretation and use of score reports, especially in the context of K-12 ELL exams in the Unites States. Existing research is limited to teachers' interpretation of score reports (Impara, Divine, Bruce, Liverman, & Gay, 1991; Luecht, 2003; Underwood, Zapata-Rivera, & VanWinkle, 2007). For example, Impara et al. (1991) investigated the extent to which teachers were able to interpret student-level results on a standardized state assessment and the extent to which interpretive information provided on the reverse side of the student score report improved teacher understanding. Findings suggest that interpretive material helped facilitate teachers' understanding of student scores on the assessment. However, few studies have examined how stakeholders actually use the interpreted information. Moreover, very few (Miller & Watkins, 2010) have examined score reports from the parents' perspective. To gain a deeper understanding of the meaningfulness and utility of score reports, it is necessary to examine both educators' and parents' perspectives. The study on which this paper is based investigated how two stakeholder groups--K-12 ELL educators and parents--interpret and use ACCESS score reports. Findings from qualitative interviews offer implications for score report development in general and how to further enhance the quality of ACCESS score reports. In the study, the authors addressed the following research questions: (1) How do K-12 ELL educators and parents interpret the information in an English proficiency exam score report?; and (2) How do K-12 ELL educators and parents use the information in an English proficiency exam score report?

Wisconsin's gaps between Black and White student high school graduation rates (Richards, 2016) and Black and White fourth-grade math and reading scores (U.S. Department of Education, 2015) are the largest in the nation. These inequalities have led to criticisms of Wisconsin's schools and teachers as ineffective in bolstering the success of students of color and those who are economically disadvantaged. However, serious attention to disparities in school readiness has largely been absent from these conversations. The authors know that nationally, students of color and children who are poor enter Kindergarten substantially behind their peers (Reardon & Portilla, 2016) and that disparity can account for much, if not most, of the achievement gap seen later in primary and secondary school (Bradbury, Corak, Waldfogel, & Washbrook, 2015). This report describes differences in school readiness as reflected by literacy skills at Kindergarten entry among children in Wisconsin. The authors document inequalities in literacy skills by race/ethnicity, family income and place. Results show that teachers and schools in Wisconsin face a daunting challenge in producing equitable educational outcomes for children.

A considerable body of work has addressed teacher labor markets and the sorting of teachers within and among school districts. Many studies have focused on urban schools within teacher labor markets, but far less research has examined teacher supply and demand among rural school districts. This study examines the pool of applicants vying for teaching vacancies in 311 Wisconsin districts to determine how applicants differ across geographic categories, particularly with regard to education, experience, and geographic preferences. We find no evidence to support claims of a rural teacher shortage; however, applicants do appear to be averse to rural contexts. Some factors, such as enrollment in particular universities and rural student teaching experiences, increase applicants' interest in rural vacancies. Similarly, districts' proximity to educator preparation programs increases applicant pools for all locales, yet rural districts tend to be further from universities and have fewer programs within a 40-mile radius.

Over many decades, teachers' compensation has been determined through standard practices, commonly represented by the single salary schedule. While these practices served districts well in a number of respects, many argue that new forms of teacher pay could provide powerful levers for changing teacher performance and improving student achievement by enhancing recruitment, development, and retention efforts for effective educators (Committee for Economic Development, 2009; Odden & Kelley, 2002; Odden & Wallace, 2008; TNTP, 2014). Historically, experiments with alternative compensation programs have been rare or episodic. Notable reforms included Kentucky's school-based performance award program, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, school-based performance award program, and the Los Angeles Vaughan charter school knowledge and skills-based compensation system. Multiple school systems in several states implemented the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching's teacher career management and compensation program known as the TAP System. The well-documented Denver ProComp system also involved a broad compensation and associated career management program restructuring. To encourage broader experimentation with compensation and human resource reforms, the U.S. Department of Education administered the Teacher Incentive Fund, in which states and districts competed for millions of dollars in grants to implement new performance-based forms of teacher pay in high-need schools (U.S. Department of Education, 2016, July 18). Additionally, the Race to the Top program (U.S. Department of Education, 2016, June 6) embraced an improvement agenda that included uses of new educator effectiveness measures to support professional growth, and educational equity and accountability goals. As a result, the prevalence and pace of compensation reform has increased nationally. Many Wisconsin school districts initiated their own teacher pay design and delivery transformations following the passage of Wisconsin Act 10 in 2011 (Beck, 2014; Mendez, 2014; Richards, 2012, August 19; Richards, 2012, November 22). Act 10 eliminated collective bargaining rights for most public employees, retained teacher compensation bargaining only for base pay increases, and limited that bargaining to the percentage change in the consumer price index (Wisconsin Act 10, 2011). With new flexibility at their disposal, and an undercurrent comprising many national compensation experiments, Wisconsin districts have begun moving away from standard compensation practices. Although pay changes are the focus of state media coverage, there are few information sources about the variety and scope of Wisconsin compensation revisions. In this paper, the authors first provide an overview of two standard compensation practices that are common around the United States. We include terminology and exhibits that illustrate the basics of such practices. They then summarize seven major types of compensation reform initiatives that are being undertaken throughout the country. The focus next turns to Wisconsin district teacher compensation reform initiatives. The authors describe key findings obtained from interviews with Wisconsin district leaders, along with our review of compensation-related district documents. They situate their findings within standard compensation practice to illustrate where and how much Wisconsin compensation practices have changed. The paper concludes with key questions districts should consider as they revise pay systems or reflect on pay changes.

Since 2012, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has maintained a statewide predictive analytics system providing schools with an early warning in middle grades of students at risk for not completing high school. DPI is considering extending and enhancing this system, known as the Dropout Early Warning System (DEWS). The proposed enhancements include better understanding how and why schools use a tool like DEWS, supports and training necessary to translate DEWS into school change, and extending DEWS into other domains such as college and career readiness. This paper identifies national models of predictive analytic systems in education, including a focus on the Early Warning Implementation Monitoring System (EWIMS) (National High School Center, 2013). The paper explores how such policies might succeed in achieving their goals (e.g., dropout prevention and reduction of predictive at-risk behaviors), ways that districts and schools can make the policies more successful, and how states and state agencies like DPI might strengthen the policies, thereby facilitating local success. The paper recommends that DPI consider: (1) fostering a network of schools for professional development and support of implementation of predictive analytics like DEWS and EWIMS; (2) developing modifications of predictive analytic indicators to measure short-term change and progress; (3) merging predictive analytics with findings of current research funded by the statewide longitudinal data system grant that will identify effective strategies for supporting students with different at-risk profiles; (4) soliciting schools for voluntary implementation of the full DEW/EWIMS model; and (5) sponsoring research on existing practices of how schools identify and intervene on behalf of at-risk students. The analysis and recommendations of the paper should not be considered as final but rather as material for further discussion and deliberation--in essence as food for thought and inquiry. The paper is organized as follows. First is a description of the details of DEWS as an example of implementation of a predictive analytics tool. Second is a logic model of the policy, which is the theory of change underlying its intended positive effects on outcomes. Third, beginning an initial assessment of the theory of change tracing the policy from schools and students, is an analysis of the strength of predictive analytic policies, using a framework developed by Porter, Floden, Freeman, Schmidt, & Schwille (1988). Fourth, following the logic model to the school level, is an analysis of the characteristics of organization and process required for successful implementation in schools, using a framework developed by Gamoran and colleagues (2003). Finally, the paper turns to the question of how outside agencies might enable successful implementation of predictive analytics, with a description of the results of a study of how three school districts supported use of college readiness indicators, followed by a discussion of how DPI might strengthen its own policies.

The idea of a skills gap suggests that employers have jobs available but cannot find skilled applicants because higher education is poorly aligned with workforce needs. This idea is shaping higher education and workforce development policy at the national and state levels, yet limited research exists on the experiences of employers and educators with skills needs, teaching and training, and cross-sector relations. Using field theory to conceptualize the complex relations among specific industrial and educational contexts, the skills valued by actors within them (i.e., cultural capital), and how college-to-workforce transitions involve moving from one field to the next, we analyze interview data from 145 educators and employers. Results indicate a shared view that skills are not simply "skills" nor are they reducible to occupational categories, but instead involve complex habits of mind that encompass cognitive, inter-, and intra-personal competencies. Analyses also highlight the importance of active learning to cultivate these competencies, the paucity of workplace training, widespread use of screening for "culture fit" as part of hiring, and the existence of multiple forms of cross-sector partnerships that cultivate students' social and cultural capital. We conclude that the skills gap, and the current focus on structural solutions such as career pathway programs and apprenticeships, is an incomplete response to a complex, cultural, and pedagogical problem. Instead, policymakers should focus on supporting the "skills infrastructure" in a systemic fashion by investing in teacher professional development, career services, and a variety of cross-field partnerships. Ultimately, we conclude that by narrowing ideas about the purpose of higher education to a sole focus on vocational preparation, the skills gap idea is fueling policies and practices that undermine the interests of employers, students, and society.

The narrative of the "skills gap," or the notion that the United States economy suffers because employers are not able to find job applicants with workplace-ready skills (e.g., American Society for Training and Development 2012), has become an influential rallying cry in higher education funding circles in recent years. It is with these gaps in mind that this paper uses a qualitative case study of STEM-related Wisconsin postsecondary institutions and businesses, based on interviews with employer and educator respondents, to explore the following questions: (1) What skills are most highly valued by employers and college educators?; and (2) According to respondents, what social, organizational, or other contextual factors, if any, influence the value and prevalence of these skills? The findings, which were conceptualized with a field theoretical framework from relational sociology (Bourdieu 1998; Martin 2003), suggest not only that employers value noncognitive competencies like work ethic and communication that students internalize through family, friends, education, and work experiences, but also that many postsecondary educators understand how such cultural currency can influence students' future success in a variety of social spheres. Furthermore, employers and educators often discussed these competencies not as singular, isolated "skills," but as multifaceted and situated "habits of mind," inextricably linked as dispositional practices and states of being.

Initiatives to increase leadership accountability coupled with efforts to promote data-driven leadership have led to widespread adoption of instruments to assess school leaders. In this paper we present a decision matrix that practitioners and researchers can use to facilitate instrument selection. Our decision matrix focuses on the psychometric properties of the instrument; the model of leadership used to construct the instrument; the feasibility of implementation; and the extent to which feedback lends itself to changes in behavior (actionability). We apply this decision matrix to two of the most prominent leadership feedback instruments, CALL and VAL-ED. We find substantial similarities between the instruments, yet each has unique strengths and drawbacks. We discuss the implications of the comparative strengths and drawbacks of the two instruments and how they might be most effectively deployed to improve leadership practices.

In 2009, a pair of meetings launched an ambitious initiative to link communities engaged in improving STEM education with those engaged in global sustainability. The organizers of the initiative, "Mobilizing STEM Education for a Sustainable Future" (details of which may be found at http://mobilizingstem.wceruw.org/), selected "critical advisors" to attend the meetings and guide discussion. These critical advisors, with expertise in relevant domains in higher education, such as professional development for faculty, curricula development, and policy and practice, were asked to propose new or adapted theories of change that can accomplish a vision for higher education. In this paper, therefore, we review theories of change already used in efforts to improve quality and access in STEM education. We consider why some STEM reform efforts based on particular theories of change (whether implicit or stated) may be more or less successful than others. To this end, this paper argues that theories of change are powerful yet often unacknowledged guides for human action for change. We first explain what a theory of change is. Then we present our findings from a preliminary study of theories of change inferred from a small sample of projects that the National Science Foundation solicited and subsequently funded to improve STEM education. We conclude by discussing the implications of unarticulated theories of change for the nation's efforts to improve STEM education. (NOTE: this WCER working paper is a version of a 2009 paper resulting from the Mobilizing STEM Education for a Sustainable Future initiative.)

Personalized learning places the interests and abilities of learners at the center of their education experience. Educators develop environments in which students and teachers together build plans for learners to achieve both interest-based and standards-based goals. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education worked with leaders at the Institute for Personalized Learning (IPL) to identify five K-12 schools for a 6-month research project documenting what personalized learning looks like in these schools. This research report presents the initial findings. The central questions and findings that guide this report are: How do IPL schools encourage students to be active participants in their learning? Educators in the IPL schools attempt to create a culture of agency by designing opportunities for students (and educators) to collaboratively control the time, pace, space, place, content and goals of their learning. How do IPL schools shift the role of educators to support personalization? IPL schools enable educators to engage in regular, data-driven consultation with students to construct learning pathways and set learning goals. How are learning technologies used in IPL schools? IPL schools develop socio-technical ecologies, that is, environments where technologies are selected by educators to address the interests and needs of all learners. The ecologies have three dimensions: (1) all schools provide information technologies that allow students to coordinate and document learning processes and outcomes; (2) all schools provide computer-adaptive assessment and curriculum programs that individuate skill and content development learning in math and reading; (3) some schools create digital media spaces to foster creativity in activities such as gaming, coding, performance, production and making. Across the IPL schools we found a shared vision of teaching and learning that framed the practices to provide students with agency over their learning, the interactions of teachers and students, and the selection and use of technologies. Commitment to a core pedagogy of student ability to design, track and assess a learning program pervades our observations at the IPL schools.

The education system of the United States is not adequately preparing a large proportion of its students for college, career-training, and, ultimately, jobs that provide enough income to support a middle class standard of living. Because the education system has failed to attain hoped-for outcomes, some states are investigating new systems, including competency-based education (CBE). A model based on CBE starts by assessing what a student knows and then allows that student to advance at a pace that reflects his or her knowledge and skills. In the process, CBE encourages student success by providing targeted learning support, thereby creating a more personalized educational experience. Once in higher education or job training, CBE allows older students (traditional-age college students or adult learners) to learn on their own time at their own pace. As competency-based pilot projects are developed in kindergarten to high school classrooms and schools (K-12) and higher education institutions, policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels are discussing options about how to support and expand CBE in both K-12 and higher education, as well as strengthen the bridge between the two systems. CBE has the potential to improve the education system of the United States by allowing more students to receive the support they need when they need it to learn effectively and master the desired content and skills, and governors are in a position to bring these efforts together and explore the transition from an education system that holds time constant and varies what students learn to a CBE system that varies time but holds content mastery constant. The promise of such a system is that it can adjust the methods of instruction and assistance to provide deeper, more personalized learning and help ensure that all students meet or exceed the high expectations of rigorous and relevant standards.

Almost everyone is familiar with the African saying, "It takes a village to raise a child." However, there are very few "villages" that actually engage in this practice. The educational assets of the village include the knowledge of neighborhood residents, the clubs, groups, and associations that are citizen-based learning environments and the local institutions (businesses, not-for-profits, and government bodies). They all provide incredible learning opportunities. It is these neighborhood educational assets that are activated in a village that raises its children. In most communities, however, these invaluable resources are unused and disconnected from the lives of young people. It appears that in one to two generations, villages have lost their power to raise children. Their functions have largely been transferred to schools. This transfer is reflected by the fact that in the last generation, schools have been asked to take responsibility for the health, safety, food, recreation, behavior, moral values, and entrepreneurial development of young people. This Kettering Foundation working paper by John McKnight, codirector of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute (ABCD), Northwestern University, presents some of ABCD's research in assisting people in local neighborhoods to identify the local teaching knowledge.

As a result of increased national emphasis on preparing future faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to teach undergraduates, more research universities offer teaching development (TD) programs to doctoral students who aspire to academic careers. Using social cognitive career theory, we examine the effects of these programs on early-career STEM scholars' sense of self-efficacy as postsecondary teachers. In 2011, a survey questionnaire was administered to 2,156 people who in 2009 were doctoral students in STEM departments at three U.S. research universities; 1,445 responded (67%). Regression analysis revealed positive relationships between participation in TD and participants' college teaching self-efficacy, and positive interaction effects for women STEM doctoral students. The paper discusses implications for doctoral students, faculty advisors, and TD programs. The following are appended: (1) Variable Descriptions; and (2) Tables.

This report provides a non-technical overview of the guiding research questions and research design for the ACT-led core research program conducted on behalf of the GEAR UP College and Career Readiness Evaluation Consortium (CCREC). The core research program is a longitudinal study of the effectiveness of 14 GEAR UP state grants on the academic achievement, college going and college retention of low-income and other at-risk students who are eligible to receive grant-funded services. This research program will follow Consortium students and a matched comparison group of non-participants over time using assessment data from ACT Explore®, ACT Plan® or ACT Aspire®, and The ACT®, and college enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) to examine differences in the academic growth and educational outcomes of these two groups.

During the past year, Wisconsin state legislators debated a series of bills aimed at closing low-performing public schools and replacing them with privately run charter schools. These proposals were particularly targeted at Milwaukee, the state's largest and poorest school district. Ultimately, the only legislation enacted was a bill that modestly increases school reporting requirements, without stipulating consequences for low performance. Nevertheless, the more ambitious proposals will likely remain at the core of Wisconsin's debates over education policy, and legislative leaders have made clear their desire to revisit them in next year's session. To help inform these deliberations, this report addresses the most comprehensive set of reforms put forward in the 2013-2014 legislative session. Backers of these reforms are particularly enamored of a new type of charter school represented by the Rocketship chain of schools--a low-budget operation that relies on young and inexperienced teachers rather than more veteran and expensive faculty, that reduces the curriculum to a near-exclusive focus on reading and math, and that replaces teachers with online learning and digital applications for a significant portion of the day. Rocketship proposes that its model--dubbed "blended learning" for its combination of in-person and computerized instruction--can cut costs while raising low-income students' test scores (Rocketship Education 2011). The call for public schools to be replaced by such tech-heavy, teacher-light operations comes from some of the most powerful actors in local and national politics: the major corporate lobbies, including Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, Americans for Prosperity, and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC). It is these groups, rather than parents or community organizations, that provided the impetus for legislators to consider proposals for mass school closure and privatization in Milwaukee. This report evaluates the "blended learning" model of education exemplified by Rocketship and seeks to understand how the "school accountability" legislation debated during the most recent legislative session would likely affect Milwaukee schools. This briefing paper also explains how such proposals might fit within the broader economic agenda of both local and national corporate lobbies. Above all, the report questions why an educational model deemed substandard for more privileged suburban children is being so vigorously promoted--perhaps even forced--on poor children in Milwaukee.

In recent years, "continuous improvement" has become a popular catchphrase in the field of education. However, while continuous improvement has become commonplace and well-documented in other industries, such as healthcare and manufacturing, little is known about how this work has manifested itself in education. This white paper attempts to map the landscape of this terrain by identifying and describing organizations engaged in continuous improvement, and by highlighting commonalities and differences among them. The findings classify three types of organizations engaged in continuous improvement: those focused on instructional improvement at the classroom level; those concentrating on system-wide improvement; and those addressing collective impact. Each type is described in turn and illustrated by an organizational case study. Through the analysis, six common themes that characterize all three types of organizations (e.g., leadership and strategy, communication and engagement, organizational infrastructure, methodology, data collection and analysis, and building capacity) are enumerated. This white paper makes four concluding observations. First, the three case studies provide evidence of organizations conducting continuous improvement work in the field of education, albeit at different levels and in different ways. Second, entry points to continuous improvement work are not mutually exclusive, but are nested and, hence, mutually informative and comparative. Third, continuous improvement is not synonymous with improving all organizational processes simultaneously; rather, research and learning cycles are iterative and gradual in nature. Fourth, despite being both iterative and gradual, it is imperative that improvement work is planned and undertaken in a rigorous, thoughtful, and transparent fashion. The following are appended: (1) Selected Continuous Improvement Methodologies; (2) Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence Framework; (3) Examples of Improvement Artifacts from the School District of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin; (4) Examples of Improvement Artifacts from Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland; and (5) Examples of Improvement Artifacts from Strive Partnership Cincinnati.

Building a stronger teacher workforce requires the thoughtful orchestration of multiple processes working together in a human capital system. This white paper presents a framework that can be used to take stock of current efforts to enhance the teacher workforce in school districts or educational organizations, as well as their underlying theories of how the teacher workforce improves over time. The paper refines and provides evidentiary support for a human capital system framework composed of four subsystems that ideally work together to build a stronger teacher workforce: (1) getting the right teachers in the right positions on time (Acquire); (2) supporting professional growth in school-based learning communities (Develop); (3) nurturing, rewarding, and challenging high-performing teachers (Sustain); and (4) informing evidence-based personnel decisions (Evaluate). Attention to this framework will engender a corps of teachers with the capacity and expertise to collectively facilitate enhanced educational outcomes.

This paper reports on a study of the current state of the art in teaching assessment. The major goal of the study was to examine a sample of assessment systems and then develop a specification for a state-of the art performance assessment system to be used for human capital management functions. The authors hope was that this specification would (a) provide a guidepost for working on a coherent instructional vision and devising methods to assess the alignment of actual instruction with that vision and (b) help states and districts think about how they want to develop their own teaching competency model and what assessment approaches fit best with different uses of this model. To that end, the paper concludes with an initial specification for a high-quality, multiuse assessment system and a preliminary road map for developing such a system. To inform their thinking, they began by reviewing several prominent assessment systems. The eight systems selected for this study are: (1) The "PRAXIS III" teacher performance assessment, developed by the Educational Testing Service for use in teacher licensure; (2) The Performance Assessment for California Teachers ("PACT"), developed by a consortium of California teacher training institutions, led by Stanford University, and used for initial teacher licensure; (3) The Formative Assessment System Continuum of Teacher Development ("FAS Continuum"), developed by the New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz; (4) The Framework for Teaching, as originally developed by Charlotte Danielson ("original FFT"); (5) The version of the FFT adapted for teacher evaluation by the Cincinnati Public Schools ("Cincinnati TES"); (6) The teacher evaluation process used by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching's Teacher Advancement Program ("TAP"); (7) The assessment system developed for certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards ("NBPTS"); and (8) The Classroom Assessment Scoring System ("CLASS") developed by Robert Pianta and his colleagues at the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at the University of Virginia. Based on their review of the competencies covered by the eight systems, their assessment procedures, and the evidence for the reliability and validity of assessment scores, they propose a preliminary set of specifications that states or districts may want to consider when deciding what approach to take to their own assessment of teaching. Developing a teaching assessment for use in a strategic human capital management system is a complex undertaking. The authors outline a process that they believe can help districts and states think about how to get started and what resources are needed. Using Value-Added and Instructional Practice Measures Together for Human Capital Management Decisions is appended. (Contains 7 tables, 1 figure and 10 footnotes.)

This paper analyzes the impact of voucher design on student sorting, and more specifically investigates whether there are feasible ways of designing vouchers that can reduce or eliminate student sorting. It studies these questions in the context of the first five years of the Milwaukee voucher program. Much of the existing literature investigates the question of sorting where private schools can screen students. However, the publicly funded U.S. voucher programs require private schools to accept all students unless oversubscribed and to pick students randomly if oversubscribed. This paper focuses on two crucial features of the Milwaukee voucher program--random private school selection and the absence of topping up of vouchers. In the context of a theoretical model, it argues that random private school selection alone cannot prevent student sorting. However, random private school selection coupled with the absence of topping up can preclude sorting by income, although there is still sorting by ability. Sorting by ability is not caused here by private school selection, but rather by parental self selection. Using a logit model and student level data from the Milwaukee voucher program for 1990-94, it then establishes that random selection has indeed taken place so that it provides an appropriate setting to test the corresponding theoretical predictions in the data. Next, using several alternative logit specifications, it demonstrates that these predictions are validated empirically. These findings have important policy implications.

The latest installment of the Fordham Institute's "Creating Sound Policy for Digital Learning" series investigates one of the more controversial aspects of digital learning: How much does it cost? In this paper, the Parthenon Group uses interviews with more than fifty vendors and online-schooling experts to estimate today's average per-pupil cost for a variety of schooling models, traditional and online, and presents a nuanced analysis of the important variance in cost between different school designs. These ranges--from $5,100 to $7,700 for full-time virtual schools, and $7,600 to $10,200 for the blended version--highlight both the potential for low-cost online schooling and the need for better data on costs and outcomes in order for policymakers to reach confident conclusions related to the productivity and efficiency of these promising new models. (Contains 2 figures and 4 endnotes.)

This research assumes a relatively stable lifeworld for young people. For example, it assumes that the meaning of volunteering or service is sufficiently similar across multiple contexts to remain a valid and stable indicator. By extension, it also assumes that the lifeworld of young people today is not undergoing a period of rapid, and perhaps even radical, change. This research began with the assumption that it is possible that a series of structural and environmental changes in the lives of young people had occurred in the past ten years or so that were sufficiently strong to have reconfigured the civic ecology, the overall environment in which young people are socialized into civic life. The hope was to reconstruct this ecology on a community wide scale. It was the intention to reconstruct the most significant networks and institutions that shaped the lives of young people as an environment in a single community, Madison, Wisconsin. The hope was further to purposively sample across these multiple networks, in order to demonstrate in some depth the quality of connection and disconnection of young people to these networks, and further, to gauge the meanings that young people themselves ascribed to these attachments. This goal was partially successful. A systematically stratified purposive sampling frame (described in this paper) that allowed identification and interviews of a very diverse group of almost 100 young people in many different contexts of their lives, ranging from the most formal institutions of school, across multiple semi-formal contexts of civic youth organizations, clubs, and volunteer settings, to informal contexts of association was constructed. Put simply, young people?s civic activities and attitudes were greatly shaped by three broad processes: (1) First, family socialization was still a prime determinant of what kinds of activities young people would engage in and why they would do so; (2) Second, the institutional setting of school ined primary context that organized these activities and channeled them in a variety of directions, supplemented in important ways by after-school settings and clubs, service, and volunteer activities; and (3) Finally, the future expectations of young people had a much stronger force in shaping what kinds of activities they engaged in and why than had been expected. Specifically, the role of college loomed larger in the lives of many of the young people and this was true across class and racial backgrounds. Many young people told us that one important reason for their civic engagement was the desire to build a resume for college admission, or in their own words, "resume-padding." And this was so whether they were oriented toward an Ivy League school, state university, or even the local technical college. Almost all of the young people interviewed expected (or at least hoped) to better their lives and linked these expectations to college education, and a majority linked their hopes for college admission to service. (Contains 3 endnotes.) [This paper was produced by Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), University of Maryland.]