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This report is the result of the participation of hundreds of students, families, school educators, and researchers who dedicated their time and energy to investigating the critical role that families and communities play in ensuring students and schools can flourish. It is a culmination of over two years of collaborative research and hundreds of conversations on six continents. While there were unique findings in each school, district, and country, six powerful lessons stand out across geographies and contexts. This research report delves into these lessons and how to build greater family, school, and community partnerships as seen through the eyes of families, educators, and students who shared their beliefs on, experiences with, and trust in schools. After venturing into government schools across rural and urban districts in Sierra Leone to facilitate conversations with families and communities, one of the lead researchers noted that there is a crucial and symbiotic relationship between schools, families, and communities that are often overlook.

Digital knowledge and skills are needed to fully participate in the society and economy of the United States. The historic $65 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act represents a significant federal investment in advancing digital equity and inclusion, and an opportunity to make lasting change in communities across the country. This report proposes solutions to strategically use that funding to advance digital equity and inclusion. We recommend nine "big plays" that districts and states can make to that end, including building and sustaining infrastructure, strengthening teachers' digital skills, and deeply engaging underrepresented communities.

Data systems are becoming powerful tools to address students' diverse and changing needs, but without comprehensive data privacy policies, the risks of unintentional or malicious disclosures of students' private information is increasing. Given the mounting challenges to protect data privacy, Education Commission of the States assembled data privacy experts and practitioners to consider strategies for protecting students' privacy without compromising the power of education data. This Policy Guide highlights participants' suggestions and offers actional approaches to maximize the use of education data while minimizing risk to students' privacy, including state examples and key considerations for state leaders.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has affected all families and communities, it is most deeply impacting students of color, students from low-income families, English learners, youth in foster care, unhoused students, students with disabilities, and other marginalized children and youth -- as well as their families. The pandemic has exposed and worsened inequities in education. At the same time, the strength of students, families, and school staff has been seen, as they have taken on new roles in their homes, schools, and communities. This document provides a list of questions for families and other advocates to ask their school and district leaders. It also shares related suggestions for how leaders can take action to support students now and reimagine how schools can better support them in the future. This resource highlights a collection of key recommendations for districts as they implement immediate actions to respond to the needs of their students and families, while also implementing actions to transform school systems to truly center equity to ensure that every student is supported to thrive socially, emotionally, and academically.

An activity for eliciting student involvement in collaborative decision-making and problem-solving with adults--the student listening circle workshop--is examined for the first time through an experimental study of its effects on participating students. A student listening circle is a facilitated focus group in which students articulate to adults their experiences, perspectives, and ideas on an important school topic and then collaborate with those adults to plan and implement related actions to improve their school climate. Although the student listening circle is intended partly as a tool to gather data to be used in school improvement efforts, it can also be considered a student intervention (O'Malley, Voight, & Izu, 2013). Accordingly, this study examines the potential impact of students' participation in listening circles on the students involved. Conducted by the School Climate Alliance with technical support from Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) West, the study took place at nine middle schools in eight California school districts in spring 2015. The study has a primary experimental component and a secondary descriptive component. The primary component is a random assignment investigation of the impacts of student listening circles on the perceptions of student participants. The secondary component is a descriptive study of staff participants' perceptions before and after a student listening circle. The primary component used surveys to ascertain student perceptions of school climate and of their competencies and compared responses from an intervention group of students with those from a control group 1 week before and 1 week and 12 weeks after participation in a student listening circle. The secondary component used surveys to assess changes in staff participants' perceptions of school supports and of student competencies after the student listening circles, as well as interviews to assess staff perceptions of practices implemented as a result of the intervention. The experimental results showed no discernible effects of the student listening circle on student participants' perceptions of school climate or on their competencies. Participation in the student listening circle was not associated with changes in student perceptions about their input into decision-making at school, relationships with school staff and peers, school bonding (sense of connectedness/belonging at school), competencies for improving the school (students' perceived ability to effect school change), or academic self-efficacy (perceived ability to succeed academically). The descriptive results of the study show that after participating in a student listening circle, a larger percentage of school staff reported the belief that students have opportunities for meaningful participation at school, trust in students, and recognition of students' competency in school improvement. These descriptive results do not provide evidence about the impacts of student listening circles because there was no staff control group. Thus any increases in staff perceptions could be due to factors other than student participation in a listening circle. Moreover, students' actual opportunities and competencies were not directly measured in the study--only staff and student perceptions of opportunities. According to interviews with school principals and student listening circle coordinators, schools followed through with most of the actions suggested during the student listening circles and implemented multiple school-improvement practices to address issues identified during the student listening circles. Although the experimental findings suggest that the student listening circle has no discernible impact on student participants, there are other reasons to implement and conduct further research. Student listening circles are also intended to improve the overall school climate by altering perceptions of staff, actively promoting a more positive school climate, and implementing schoolwide practices. Future studies with a different design may seek to ascertain the extent to which student listening circles have schoolwide effects other than on the perceptions of student and staff participants. Potential schoolwide impacts include effects on decision-making practices in schools, school bonding, and improved relationships between school staff and students. The following are appended: (1) Research design, outcome measures, and analysis methods; (2) Student listening circle goals set and actions taken; (3) Ancillary analyses of student surveys; and (4) Student and staff surveys.

The first charter school law surfaced in Minnesota in 1991, and since then, 42 additional states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have passed laws governing charter schools. Yet still today, the details within those state laws vary significantly, and seven states do not have a law at all. Legislation permitting charter schools was recently passed in Alabama, but failed to progress in West Virginia. In the states where charter school legislation already exists, modifications to existing policy are consistently being made. Through its review of commonalities in state policies highlighted in the Education Commission of the States (ECS) charter school database, as well as recommendations on the critical components of charter school laws from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, ECS has compiled key questions that are worthy of consideration during the creation of a new charter school law or the revision of existing law. National comparisons and state examples are provided if covered in the ECS charter school database. This report contains questions regarding the following categories: (1) general; (2) authorizing bodies; (3) accountability; (4) autonomy; (5) funding; (6) teachers; and (7) students. Key takeaways in this policy analysis include: (1) Thirty-three states and Puerto Rico have a statewide authorizing body in place; (2) Eleven states and the District of Columbia have established academic performance thresholds below which charters must be revoked or non-renewed; and (3) 29 states and the District of Columbia provide facilities funding or other facilities assistance to charter schools.

The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, which was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was a multiyear effort to improve student outcomes--particularly high school graduation and college attendance among low-income minority students--by increasing student access to effective teaching. The RAND Corporation worked with the foundation to collect and warehouse data from participating sites and to produce annual data dashboards that presented quantitative information about key indicators of the progress of the reforms. During the course of this project, the RAND data team conducted four key activities: (1) defining the metrics that would be used to monitor and assess annual progress and that would appear in the dashboard, (2) collecting the data from the sites to compute the metrics, (3) managing and standardizing the data, and (4) creating the dashboard and reporting the metrics to the sites and the foundation. This report discusses the challenges in defining metrics and collecting data. It also describes how the RAND data team addressed those challenges. Specifically, the authors examine challenges and recommendations in four areas: (1) issues related to defining metrics used to track system performance; (2) issues related to data collection; (3) issues related to managing and standardizing data across sites; and (4) issues related to data confidentiality, data sensitivity, and partnerships. The authors also draw overarching lessons related to the systematic use of education data for periodic program monitoring.

This policy brief is a guide for state education policy leaders to use in selecting and prioritizing college- and career-ready student performance indicators. These indicators can be built into the state's accountability system through public reporting, statewide performance goals, school-level incentives, and accountability formulas used to differentiate and classify schools and districts. Many of these indicators, along with critical non-academic indicators such as attendance, are also valuable for "early warning" systems to identify students in need of extra support. As each of these uses will drive actions in districts, schools and communities, the indicators must provide meaningful, actionable information to the right people at the right time to improve student outcomes. Teachers and administrators need these data in real time to take action--to change, adjust, or fine-tune systemic approaches to specific practices to support individual students, to identify emerging successes, and to benchmark best practices. Students and their parents need timely and clear data to understand where they are on the trajectory to college and career--not just in high school, but all along their academic path. Finally, policymakers and the public need access to these data to align resources, evaluate impacts from specific strategies, and inform a wide range of strategic decisions to improve outcomes and opportunities for all students. The brief focuses on academic performance indicators that illuminate student readiness for college and career across the P-20 spectrum, and makes the case for why each of these indicators matters to students. The actions required of educators, policymakers, parents, and community members are discussed in light of the academic indicators. The brief also illuminates critical decision points and trade-offs that states should consider for each indicator. The list of potential indicators is not meant to be exhaustive, as states may determine that others would be more strategic given their context. States should also not feel as though they need to use all of these indicators--in fact, states that carefully select a smaller set of indicators that will have the strongest impact could benefit by clearly focusing the right people, at the right time, on the indicators that matter most. The brief includes guiding questions designed to help states make decisions about which indicators will matter most, and identify ways they can be used to reinforce the state's policy priorities.

This paper briefly reviews the various efforts undertaken by the University of California to maintain diversity in the institution, and especially at its highly competitive flagship campuses, UCLA and Berkeley, in the face of the loss of affirmative action during the mid-1990s. It demonstrates the continuing decline in representation of underrepresented minorities (URMs) in spite of these efforts, even as URMs have become the majority of all students in the state. Although applications to the flagship campuses have doubled since 1995, and all groups have seen reductions in the percent of applicants offered admission, African American and Latino admittees have been reduced by 70 to 75 percent at UCLA and UC Berkeley, compared to just 35 and 40 percent for Asian and white applicants. This disproportionate decline reflects the inequalities in the California educational system that fails to prepare African American, Native American and Latino students for highly competitive selection processes "irrespective of their intellectual ability or likelihood of succeeding in their studies." The consequences of continuing down the same path will likely result in the solidification of educational inequality and economic dislocations for the state. (Contains 2 tables, 3 figures and 42 footnotes.)

This project focuses on the policies and practices of school boards (or mayors or others who govern public schools), and how their priorities can make a tangible difference in the academic success of kids living in poor communities. Instead of focusing on deficits of poverty, the researchers wanted to stress school board action as an effective supplement that can give all students an equal opportunity to succeed. That led them to examine learning-related education resources (aside from direct dollars) and how they are distributed by neighborhood. Appleseed's "The Same Starting Line" report invites school board members, educators, communities and policymakers to shift the conversation about public schools from what kids lack to what schools and school boards, superintendents and other key decision-makers must provide. Constant talk of an achievement gap emphasizes standardized test results as the premiere measure of academic prowess and future potential. It also invokes class differences. Poverty is frequently cited as the central reason for test score disparities. Experts attest that children from economically struggling homes arrive at school with a smaller vocabulary, fewer world-expanding experiences, less math and science away from school, and an unfortunate environment where survival sometimes trumps high educational ambitions. The researchers thus recommend ways to spot differences between educational offerings in middle-class and high-poverty neighborhoods and discuss how that awareness can help reverse the discernable pattern in which decent schools are located in well-off areas and a lesser education awaits students in poverty. Appended are: (1) Methodology and Scope of Work Profiles of Districts in the Appleseed Study; and (2) Basic Resource Equity Assessment Document. (Contains 8 figures and 38 endnotes.) [This paper was written with assistance from Craig Baab, Vaughn Branch, John Pickens, Jesse Abrams-Morley, Malcolm Rich, Michael C. D'Agostino, Claire Howard, Robert Kettle, Sharon Hill, Rob Rhodes, Adam Sparks, Adrian Pedroza, Jennifer Ramo, and Javier Martinez Villanueva.]

Focusing on student proficiency in reading and math from 2003-04 to 2006-07, this report compares gaps in performance on state achievement tests between grade 8 American Indian and Alaska Native students and all other grade 8 students in 26 states serving large populations of American Indian and Alaska Native students. In response to a request by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), this study reports on the gap between American Indian and Alaska Native students and all other students on state achievement tests beginning in 2003/04, shortly after implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). It describes achievement patterns for grade 8 American Indian and Alaska Native students and all other grade 8 students between 2003/04 and 2006/07, focusing on student proficiency in reading and math on state assessments in 26 states serving large populations of American Indian and Alaska Native students. Staff at eight regional educational laboratories collected data on statewide assessment results, number of students tested, and annual measurable objectives for states with grade 8 state assessment data for 2003/04 (20 CCSSO network states and 6 other states that served at least 4,000 American Indian and Alaska Native students). Using annual measurable objectives, the researchers analyzed proficiency rates in each subject against NCLB goals by state. Proficiency rates were graphically arrayed for each state and subject across the four years to show patterns in the achievement gaps between American Indian and Alaska Native students and other students. This revealed changes in the performance of these students relative to all other students and to the annual measurable objective. Results indicate that in most states both American Indian and Alaska Native students and all other students experienced achievement gains across the study period. Although achievement gaps were generally found to persist, the American Indian and Alaska Native students were at least keeping pace by increasing in achievement along with all other students. The majority of states with three or four years of continuous data saw an increase in the proficiency rates of American Indian and Alaska Native students in both reading and math, with either a decrease in their performance deficit or, in states where their performance was above that of other groups, an increase in their performance lead over other students. Five appendices are included: (1) Results from the National Indian Education Study and Trend Analyses; (2) Methods and Data Limitations; (3) Table of State Assessment Program Web Addresses; (4) Reading Proficiency Rates by State: 2003/04 to 2006/07; and (5) Math Proficiency Rates by State: 2003/04 to 2006/07. (Contains 2 notes, 52 figures, 2 boxes and 6 tables.) [For the associated summary report, see ED505876.]

This report focuses on the 15 states of the West (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming), their ability to educate minorities, and the resulting impact on their workforces and economies. The foundation of the Western U.S. economy rests on a workforce that is becoming increasingly diverse, as residents of European descent are growing older and making up an ever-smaller proportion of the workforce, and the economy demands more upward mobility among Hispanic, Black non-Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native populations. The following questions are addressed in this the report: (1) What are the current education gaps between minorities and White non-Hispanics? (2) How well are certain minorities prepared for high-skill, high-wage jobs? (3) What is their status in the workforce as a result? (4) Has their status in the workforce improved for recent generations? and (5) What would be the impact if we improved our ability to educate these disadvantaged populations? The report does not provide solutions: it is intended to expand understanding of the impact of racial and ethnic inequality on the Western United States' ability to compete educationally and economically with countries around the world that have gained ground with respect to educational attainment, and to add some insight into efforts to address the challenges that minority populations face. (Contains 7 endnotes and 37 figures.)

It is estimated that around 2.4 million students per year were retained in U.S. schools in the late 1990s. Are these children receiving the best educational services to suit their needs? Are there differences between low-achieving students who are not retained and those who are? Researchers and practitioners are asking these and other questions as the long-held assumptions regarding retention are increasingly challenged. This policy brief looks at some of the challenges around retention and presents a number of related policy considerations for addressing those challenges. (Contains 6 endnotes and 1 figure.) [This document was prepared by the Center for Child and Family Policy.]

Over the past decade, developers of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have changed substantially the mix of item types on the NAEP assessments by decreasing the numbers of multiple-choice questions and increasing the numbers of questions requiring short- or extended-constructed responses. These changes have been motivated largely by efforts to encompass the more complex learning outcomes being codified by new curriculum and assessment standards in a number of subject areas. That is, NAEP has attempted to align with widely endorsed recommendations for greater focus on the development and use of higher-order-thinking skills in instruction as well as assessments that better allow students to demonstrate such skills. With the inclusion of short and extended constructed-response questions on the NAEP assessments, however, researchers have begun to notice unacceptably high student nonresponse rates (Koretz et al. 1993). As a result, NAEP reports, analyses, and subsequent conclusions may be potentially confounded by the fact that large numbers of students are not answering some of the questions. Additionally, nonresponse rates seem to vary with student characteristics like gender and race, which may further impact the validity of NAEP conclusions. In this study, the authors explored potential reasons behind student omission of responses to assessment questions. Understanding why students fail to answer certain questions may help inform the proper treatment of missing data during the estimation of item parameters and achievement distributions. It may also help test developers identify strategies for increasing response rates for particular types of questions or for particular groups of students. The study was exploratory, small in scope, and qualitative in nature. The general approach was to visit schools where the 1998 eighth-grade national NAEP assessments in reading and civics were being conducted and interview samples of students about their test taking behaviors and their reasons for not answering particular questions following the assessment sessions. In their interviews the authors also attempted to determine whether the students could have correctly answered the questions they had left blank. Five research questions guided this study: (1) What are the reasons students give for not answering questions on the eighth-grade reading and civics NAEP assessments? (2) Are students leaving particular types of questions unanswered on these two assessments more often than other types? (3) How valid is the assumption that students have attempted, and then passed over, questions left blank in the middle of an item block, but that students have not attempted questions left blank at the end of an item block? (4) How valid is the assumption that if students skip items in the middle of an item block, they do not know the answers? and (5) What modifications can be made to NAEP assessments to decrease the numbers of questions left unanswered? [Commissioned by the NAEP Validity Studies (NVS) Panel (formed by the American Institutes for Research under contract with the National Center for Education Statistics), March 1999.]

This report takes a broad look at the status of California's high schools. It examines the demands being placed on schools, new systems for accountability, available data on the performance of students and schools, and the resources high schools currently devote to helping students achieve. The text focuses on the various factors that influence curriculum and requirements, such as how college admissions drive high-school course offerings and the emphasis that industry places on school-to-career pathways. It discusses how student-achievement and school-accountability measures are changing, how low-achieving students have faced few consequences, how California is raising the bar on high-school graduation, and how school evaluation has depended on self-study processes. The article outlines the key elements of California's new school-accountability system and how the state currently measures student and school performance. It details how college-preparation data are revealing positive trends in student achievement and reports that more students are aiming for college. It assesses the kinds of students in the system and states that high schools lack qualified staff. The document concludes that schools must be made safe, that they must offer afterschool programs, and that funding adequacy is a key concern. (RJM)

In California, the passage of Proposition 63 set aside funds for prevention and early intervention (PEI) and allowed for local and statewide activities. Recognizing the importance of including evidence-based PEI approaches into a comprehensive spectrum of care for mental disorders, the California Mental Health Services Authority (CalMHSA)--a coalition of California counties designed to provide economic and administrative support to mental health service delivery--formed a statewide PEI Implementation Workplan. The workplan guided the development of three program initiatives designed to meet the following goals: (1) stigma and discrimination reduction; (2) suicide prevention; and (3) improvement of student mental health. Under each initiative, community organizations, private firms, and public K-12 and higher education systems serve as PEI program partners, performing activities to meet the initiative's goals. In the summer of 2011, program partners began their activities. In the fall of 2011, the RAND Corporation was selected to design and implement an evaluation of the three initiatives, and the final evaluation plan was approved and launched in the summer of 2012. This summary focuses on the evaluation findings that have been produced in the second year of the evaluation, from the summer of 2013 through the summer/fall of 2014. Based on results in year two, the CalMHSA PEI initiatives are successfully launched and are already showing positive outcomes in stigma and discrimination reduction, suicide prevention, and improvement of student mental health.

Proficiency rates among California students continue to rise. At the end of the 2009-10 school year, the share of students who demonstrated proficiency on the California Standards Test was greater than 50 percent in both English language arts (ELA) and math. California's proficiency rates have increased more than 18 percentage points over the last seven years, and rates of proficiency growth have been similar across all student subgroups. California schools appear to be heading in the right direction, but the fact that more than 40 percent of all students are not proficient in ELA and math suggests that California still has a long way to go. And although proficiency rates have increased in all subgroups, significant proficiency gaps--such as the gap between white and Latino students--remain. Moreover, budget cuts may make it difficult to maintain the rate of progress people have seen since 2003.

This analysis of the impact of the student vote in the June 1974 primary election is one in a series of reports, and represents the University of California Student Lobby's continuing effort to provide information on the voting behavior of students. Student voting patterns in contested statewide and local races were examined, along with voter registration and turnout patterns. The data were obtained by examining election results in "student precincts;" that is, precincts on or near college campuses in which a high percentage of residents are students. The political preferences of 35,000 students living in 78 student precincts on or near 21 California colleges and universities were studied. Statistical tables accompany the text. (Author/PG)

This study identifies the internal and external factors which differentiate women who enter male-traditional vocational training programs from those who enter female-traditional programs. Data were collected from 470 women enrolled in California vocational training programs. The sample was stratified on both social class and type of vocational training site--either secondary, Regional Occupational Centers/Programs (ROPs), or community college. Approximately equal numbers of women in male-dominated programs (nontraditionals) and female-dominated programs (traditionals) completed the self-administered questionnaire regarding (1) demographic/family background; (2) support/encouragement from others; (3) peer experience with nontraditional programs; and (4) personality and sex-role orientation. Results revealed the student subgroups differed most significantly in the amount of support, encouragement, and discouragement they received from the important others in their lives. Recommendations are made for steps which can be taken to improve educational quality and foster equality of educational opportunity. (Author)