Search

School leaders, specifically principals, play a pivotal role in shaping student learning outcomes. The benefits of strong leaders extend beyond academic achievement, such as reductions in absenteeism and exclusionary discipline. While quality principals are critical for creating and sustaining quality schools, the staffing pipeline is facing significant challenges. In the context of these challenges, and recognizing the critical influence of effective leadership on student success, many states have recently enacted policies to better recruit, support and retain principals and other school leaders. This Policy Snapshot reviews trends in recent state legislation from 2022 to 2024 and highlights examples of both proposed and enacted laws in four key areas: (1) Certification and preparation; (2) Professional development; (3) Evaluation; and (4) Financial incentives and compensation.

Home visiting connects expectant parents, new caregivers, and their young children with a support person, called a home visitor. The home visitor meets regularly with the family, develops a relationship with them, and supports them to achieve their goals and meet their needs. To reach the thousands of additional families who could benefit from home visiting, we must increase support for culturally relevant and family-centered models. A new report -- "Community-Based Home Visiting: Fidelity to Families, Commitment to Outcomes" -- delves into the unique strengths and challenges of community-based home visiting models, whose design and measures of success intentionally center the perspectives of the families and communities they serve. These models are often developed by those with experience with the unique cultures, strengths, and solutions of he community they live in and aim to serve. This report summarizes themes from listening sessions with 30+ community-based home visiting models from across the country. It offers policy and funding recommendations that would improve support for these models and therefore families' access to home visiting that best meets their goals. [Additional support was provided by the National Home Visiting Coalition Steering Committee.]

In an era in which public postsecondary institutions increasingly face budget constraints, the state residency of students has become an important factor in complex decisions on tuition-setting policies and enrollment management. This report examines the current trends and impact of out-of-state tuition premiums -- defined as the additional amount of tuition and fees for nonresident students -- at public four-year institutions in the U.S. Regional approaches to reducing out-of-state tuition premiums are described, and past research on the effects of tuition premiums is summarized.

Salaries are one of the most powerful policy levers states and school districts can use to attract qualified, effective, and diverse teachers. What role do states play in supporting strategic use of salaries? This report examines the state teacher compensation policies that influence districts' potential strategic use of teacher pay. It analyzes three types of state policies that aim to attain three purposes: (1) Differentiated pay: To attract teachers to traditionally hard-to-staff subjects or schools; (2) Performance pay: To reward high-performing teachers; and (3) Pay for prior work: To compensate teacher candidates for prior experience relevant to teaching. With the influx of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, some states have designed new or expanded already existing initiatives aimed to attract or retain teachers to hard-to-staff positions. The analysis in this report includes these state strategies, while acknowledging that they might only remain in place temporarily while ESSER funds remain available. [For the the second report in this three-part series, "State of the States 2021: Teacher Preparation Policy," see ED611532.]

School finance reforms are not well defined and are likely more prevalent than the current literature has documented. Using a Bayesian changepoint estimator, we quantitatively identify the years when state education revenues abruptly increased for each state between 1960 and 2008 and then document the state-specific events that gave rise to these changes. We find 108 instances of abrupt increases in state education revenues across 43 states; about one-quarter of these changes had been undocumented. Half of the abrupt increases that occurred post-1990 were preceded by litigation-prompted legislative activity, and Democrat-party control of a state increases the probability of a changepoint occurring by 8 percentage points.

Many districts struggle to access the cybersecurity expertise or other resources needed to secure their networks and data appropriately. This isn't because mitigation strategies don't exist. Often, the barrage of suggestions and warnings directed at school IT leaders are too overwhelming to navigate, are not properly scoped for educational situations and infrastructure, or the financial and human resources to implement them are inadequate. Proper cybersecurity practices and routines, much like the networks and other infrastructure they are meant to protect, are new, continually developing, and changing at the pace of technological innovation. To better share information and create awareness to help states address growing concerns, State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and in partnership with K12 SIX and CoSN, has created a Cybersecurity and Privacy Collaborative. This unique group brings together the expertise of technology leaders from some twenty state departments of education and a dozen trusted edtech partners from the private sector. As the group begins its work together, this report represents their shared perspective on the K-12 cybersecurity landscape for 2022.

This report explains how State Entity (SE) Program grantees are using or proposed to use the technical assistance (TA) set-aside portion of their Charter School Programs (CSP) funds for these activities. This report also describes SE activities to ensure subgrantees are equipped to meet the needs of all students, and specifically students with disabilities and English learners (ELs). Researchers gathered data for this report from all SEs that received grants between 2017 and 2019 by reviewing their approved applications, surveying SE grantees in spring 2020, and conducting a follow-up survey completed in January 2021. The report begins with a summary of aggregate findings across the grantees, followed by descriptions of how funds are used by each individual SE grantee. This report will be updated when CSP awards new SE grants.

In 1994, the Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC) joined its sister compacts in offering a regional student reciprocity and tuition exchange opportunity known as the Midwest Student Exchange Program (MSEP). The program allowed students from one MHEC state to attend an institution at a reduced tuition rate in another MHEC state when the student's home state did not offer the degree program the student was seeking. This arrangement benefitted students, families, institutions, and states by increasing options and decreasing costs for families and students while increasing enrollments and student in-migration at participating schools in MSEP states. This report begins with an overview of current trends in higher education and moves to a discussion of the contemporary role of student exchange and tuition reciprocity programs. These sections are followed by a 25-year history of MSEP, placing MSEP in context vis-à-vis other reciprocity programs, its original goals, and the contemporary needs and priorities of students, families, institutions, and states.

One year after the COVID-19 pandemic forced state and school leaders across the nation and around the world to immediately close school buildings, the lasting impact on students is increasingly evident: Months of online learning and limited in-person interaction with educators, coaches and mentors have led to gaps in learning, and unknown emotional impacts on millions of K12 students and educators. Experiences of the past year have brought deeper understanding and greater clarity on how best to organize schooling and deliver instruction in a way that minimizes health risks and maximizes learning and engagement. Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and National Governors Association (NGA) analyzed emerging state efforts to accelerate student learning this summer and during the 2021-22 school year. They reviewed available state plans, websites, media reports and gubernatorial State of the State addresses for most states. Because each state is at different stages in their planning, in many cases, the documents reviewed were initial drafts, plan outlines (with specifics still being developed) or the first in a series of resources being developed. This memo provides an overview of notable strategies and trends that were identified through this analysis, and is organized around four major steps, which serve as the framing for this memo. Along with describing the activities states are taking as part of each step, this memo includes a range of state examples and links to related resources. As state approaches continue to evolve and plans are finalized, states are encouraged to share their detailed strategies with CCSSO, NGA and the field. The four major steps states are taking include: (1) Getting organized and understanding what needs to happen; (2) Using summer 2021 to accelerate learning; (3) Supporting more students to be successful learners; and (4) Tackling other challenges: Future considerations.

This "Equity by Design" brief highlights equity issues that arise in the process of reopening schools during a global pandemic. The authors examine state plans and guidance for reopening schools across states in the Midwest & Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP EAC) region which includes the 13 states of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The purpose of this paper is to provide explicit consideration of equity issues in the context of reopening schools and generate discussion about the topics addressed. The following topics are covered: (1) time spent in face-to-face instruction vs. virtual or hybrid learning environments and any calendar changes; (2) screening and reporting of COVID-19 symptoms and exposure; (3) social distancing, face masks and classroom set up; (4) ensuring more equitable learning for students with dis/abilities and multilingual learners; (5) access to technology; (6) opportunities and challenges in online learning, (7) communication with parent/caregivers; (8) addressing learning loss; (9) guidance on Social Emotional Learning (SEL); and (10) guidance on field trips and co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. Throughout this brief, the authors highlight equity issues that inevitably arise in the context of schooling where conditions of access are likely exacerbated by the pandemic and how one might approach and consider these issues in planning and policy. As school and district leaders review and revise policy implementation, the guidance outlined in this paper can inform the way that policy is implemented and can help highlight issues around equity that district and school personnel may not have considered in planning for reopening.

The current brief provides an overview of the 2021-2022 school year student-to-school psychologist ratio for every United States territory, using the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) counts of school psychologists. In addition to this, data are presented on the percentage change in student-to-school psychologist ratio from the 2020-2021 school year to the 2021-2022 school year (i.e., most recently released data). When territory ratios for the 2021-2022 school year were examined by region, the Northeast region was found to have significantly smaller ratios (i.e., fewer students per school psychologist) than all other regions. No associations were found between the student-to-school psychologist ratio and territory population or number of graduate programs in school psychology in that territory. There was a significant association between the student-to-school psychology ratio and the average salary in that territory. This information is vital for tracking workforce shortages, as well as the effects of advocacy efforts, throughout the country.

The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) and MHEC were awarded a competitive grant from the American Institutes for Research in 2019 as part of its National Research Collaborative on Postsecondary Competency-based Education and Learning (cberesearch.org). The grant objective was to specifically identify state policies related to the review of military transcripts and experience for military-connected students entering or reentering postsecondary education and explore how these policies are generally interpreted by the state higher education agency involved with implementation. The intent of the report is to provide a resource for those considering or amending a state policy as well as providing a repository that demonstrates policy variances.

All but four states in the nation now permit teachers to come into the profession through an "alternate route," compared to only a few 30 years ago. Alternate routes into the classroom have grown so acceptable that about one in five teachers now enters the profession through one of these programs, which offer some real benefits to the profession. Nearly double the percentage of teacher candidates in alternate route programs identify as Black and more than double identify as Latino as compared to traditional teacher preparation programs (15% vs. 8%, and 13% vs. 5%, respectively). Additionally, alternate route candidates often fill jobs in hard-to-staff subjects and schools. When it comes to requirements for alternate routes, states must balance between upholding standards for educators regardless of how they come into the profession with providing flexibility by differentiating the requirements they place on these programs from traditional pathways. Since alternate route candidates typically become a teacher of record immediately or shortly after they enter into a program, establishing strong entrance requirements and specifying essential supports are important levers states should exercise. This brief explores how states fare in the balancing act between appropriate oversight and flexibility.

Children should develop literacy skills that progress from learning to read to reading to learn as they move from kindergarten through early elementary. These skills support reading proficiency and build knowledge in all subject areas. Students who struggle with literacy skills as early as kindergarten often continue to read below grade level throughout the early grades. They also generally fail to receive the assistance they need to catch up. Reading proficiency rates have increased for all student groups over the last two decades, as research has identified best practices for instruction, assessment, curriculum, teacher preparation and intensive intervention to prevent and mitigate reading difficulties. States have enacted at least 91 bills since 2017 to to improve early literacy outcomes across the literacy spectrum. This Policy Brief provides an overview of state strategies to promote literacy in kindergarten through third grade. They are best practices in assessment, prevention and intervention. It also provides examples of state literacy strategies that incorporate research-based approaches and policy takeaways for consideration.

As part of our research on the community college baccalaureate (CCB), we studied the prospects of adopting and scaling CCB degrees in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Higher education leaders in these six Great Lakes states recognized the potential for CCB degrees to increase academic, geographic and financial access to higher education but concerns about mission creep, program duplication, and competition with universities within their states were on their minds. All leaders thought a more in-depth approach to analyzing labor force demand for CCB degree graduates would be helpful. In response, we used federal and state datasets to estimate job vacancies and annual degree conferral and found openings in business, software development, early childhood education, and registered nursing that may hold promise for CCB degrees in one or more Great Lakes states. [For Data Note 8, see ED608176.]

Social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies or standards derive from SEL frameworks. In this report, the terms "SEL competencies" and "standards" are used interchangeably to refer to statements about "what students should know and be able to do," recognizing that states may use different terms such as "competencies," "learning goals," or "benchmarks." In 2019, 14 separate sets of K-12 "learning standards" or "competencies" were analyzed for SEL that states have developed. This report updates that previous analysis to include four additional sets of learning standards (for a total of 18 states) and provides important updates about the original 14 states. The goal in this brief is to examine the specific SEL frameworks the states use and the competencies they have articulated based on these frameworks.

The United States leads the world in the number of incarcerated persons per 100,000. In today's global economy, these numbers represent huge wastes in human capital, especially when you consider the inequitable nature of the American criminal justice system, as witnessed by the disproportionate racial and ethnic composition, types of crimes, and length of prison sentences represented within this population. Regardless of the pathway to prison, most incarcerated people will eventually return to the communities from which they came, so one of the important questions may be, how does society want them to show up? Broken or made whole? Angry or hopeful? Employable or unemployable? Role model or counterexample? The essence of this paper is linked to a favored quote by the late Nelson Mandela, who said, "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." These words are as profound today as they were in 1990 when he addressed an audience of Boston high school students. Furthermore, education in America remains one of the best investments individuals and governments can make, which should include investment in prison-based education programs. These types of efforts are cost-effective, reduce recidivism, improve employment prospects, increase civic engagement, and can disrupt generational poverty. Despite Second Chance Pell programs and other evidence supporting the multilayered value of postsecondary (coursework beyond high school) education for incarcerated populations, barriers and challenges persist. Fortunately, leaders of state agencies and systems of higher education are increasingly exploring the feasibility of these programs for their states. This paper presents preliminary findings from a survey SHEEO administered to its members in 2018. It advocates for postsecondary education for incarcerated persons as a relevant policy issue at federal and state levels in current political environments. Key findings and recommendations were informed by responses from 38 percent of SHEEO's membership. States responding to the survey were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming. Non-member organizations included Truckee Meadows Community College (NV); University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Bismarck State College (ND); and the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges. The paper is organized around three main categories: access, program delivery, and reentry of program participants into society, with the following key performance indicators.

In the United States, approximately 65 percent of all jobs in 2020 will require some level of postsecondary education, and the demand will reach 68 percent in Iowa. This report seeks to inform public discourse on higher education by providing key performance indicators relevant to the goal of improving educational attainment for a healthy economy and society. Performance indicators are categorized within five areas: (1) Preparation; (2) Participation; (3) Completion; (4) Affordability; and (5) Finance. Several indicators provide the national and Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC) regional values as well as the median of the top five states in the nation as possible benchmarks. Performance indicators are disaggregated by race/ethnicity and family income when data are available.

This topic paper details how dual and concurrent enrollment programs can help states overcome workforce readiness and postsecondary access and completion challenges and how governors can strengthen these programs by using their bully pulpit, agenda setting authority and budgetary authority to do so. It concludes with a number of examples of how governors are acting to strengthen equity and access to these programs. It also includes a number of resources for interested policy makers.

Spatial-Temporal Math (ST Math) is game-based, instructional software for K-12 students created by the MIND Research Institute (MIND). ST Math is integrated into classroom instruction, but can also be used in a computer lab or at home. The ST Math software games begin without language and symbol abstractions by posing math programs as purely visual puzzles. Interactive animated visual manipulatives provide informative feedback to student solutions. This report presents the findings from an assessment of mathematics outcomes in elementary schools across multiple states that were provided with the ST Math program. Data from 474 treatment schools in 16 states that included grade levels 3 through 5 were used in the evaluation. Of these 474 schools, 392 provided data for grade level 3, 366 provided data for grade level 4, and 374 provided data for grade level 5. The study found statistically significant differences between the ST-Math group and the matched-comparison group on the percentage of students scoring at or above proficient on the state standardized mathematics assessment. The strength of the effect was equivalent to 0.17 of a standard deviation. For schools where the ST Math program was implemented with fidelity in at least one grade level there was a difference between the treatment and comparison group on the percentage of students scoring at or above proficient on the state standardized mathematics assessment. The difference was statistically significant with an effect equivalent to 0.35 of a standard deviation. [This report was submitted to and funded by the MIND Research Institute.]

Grant aid -- whether based on financial need, merit, or a combination therein -- is the primary form of financial aid awarded by states. States use grant aid to encourage academic preparation, enhance access to postsecondary education, affect students' choice of college, support persistence, and reduce out-of-state migration. State grant aid programs can be distinguished from other sources of grant aid, such as institutional scholarships or tuition discounts as well as the Pell Grant, the federal government's principal need-based program. The purpose of this report is to help policymakers compare their state's grant programs to others and also understand how policy design features relate to student outcomes. First, the report provides context for understanding state grant programs that serve undergraduate students, and then it describes common and distinguishing features of state grant programs by focusing on eligibility requirements, funding sources, and program magnitude, including award amounts and number of recipients. In addition, the characteristics of recipients are considered, including the type of institution attended, family income, race/ethnicity, and enrollment intensity. An overview is then provided of the research findings on the effects of state grants on educational attainment. Finally, implications and recommendations are identified. [This brief examines a critical state policy issue identified through the College Affordability Research Initiative, a collaboration between the Midwestern Higher Education Compact and the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good at the University of Michigan.]

Promoting family economic security and mobility requires collaboration across key systems that serve families. This report describes opportunities for the early childhood and higher education systems to support each other's key goals for system advancements to increase economic mobility among America's families. It provides examples of early education/higher education partnerships at multiple levels that use a variety of funding sources and that often benefit from leaders and champions who understand the importance of addressing families' postsecondary and early education needs in an integrated fashion. This report also provides a set of principles and recommendations for establishing effective partnerships, informed by the guiding voices of parents. Engaging leaders at all levels, improving data availability, and modifying policies to improve the flow of information, supports, and resources available to families, programs, institutions, and innovative partnerships are key steps to integrating systems to better support families. [This report is a project of the Center on Equity in Higher Education.]

Researchers, policymakers and educators are increasingly focused on the accurate identification, assessment, and referral of English learners (ELs) with disabilities, stemming in part from both the under- and over-identification of ELs for special education services, as compared to non-ELs identified for these services. Appropriate decision making is important because ELs with disabilities who are not identified will miss out on services that they need. Conversely, ELs who are misidentified as having a disability receive special education services that they do not require, which may reduce time available for EL services and participation in the general classroom, potentially reducing access to rigorous academic content, and result in social stigma (Umansky, Thompson, & Díaz, 2017; Sullivan, 2011; Garcia & Tyler, 2010; Bianco, 2005; Higgins, Raskind, Goldberg & Herman, 2002). To ensure that students are receiving optimal instruction and appropriate interventions and assessments, state, district, and school leaders will need to develop or improve the systemic processes educators and administrators work through. Providing manuals with consistent and practical guidance (and professional learning on their use) is one means to do so. The purpose of this report is to describe ideas and lessons learned from leaders in four states (Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia), a statewide association (Special Education Local Plan Area [SELPA] Administrators of California Association), and a school district (San Diego Unified School District [SDUSD]), all of which have developed manuals. It is hoped that these ideas and lessons will assist leaders who are creating or are in the process of revising procedures and policies of their own. The report presents findings from telephone interviews conducted with the authors of six manuals from December 2017 to January 2018, probing the impetus for getting started; the manual development process; dissemination and professional learning; and lessons learned during manual development.

This Policy Brief provides a detailed look at 529 education savings plans -- investment accounts with tax advantages -- including a breakdown of maximum annual dollar amounts and state tax deductions allowed, state responses to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, information on legislation in 2018 that changes eligible expenses allowed under 529 plans and a list of questions for state policymakers to consider when identifying the types of data they wish to collect on their existing 529 plans.

The notion that the U.S. has a growing skills gap -- the difference between what employers need to fill in-demand positions and the skill of the current workforce -- is a hot topic among policymakers. By 2020, 65 percent of jobs will require postsecondary education and training beyond high school, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Additionally, the report projects that the increase in demand for a technically trained and educated workforce will continue to grow beyond 2020. Research suggests that quality career and technical education (CTE) programs in high school can support students in building foundational technical skills, gaining practical experience and laying the foundation for future pursuits in postsecondary education and their careers. This Policy Snapshot highlights enacted legislation in 2017 and 2018 pertaining to career and technical education. States enacted career and technical education (CTE) policy in one or more of the following areas: awareness and support, collaboration and research, graduation requirements and dual credit, work-based learning, and funding.

Public charter schools present tremendous opportunities to increase the access of Native students to high-quality schools. Understanding current growth and the location of schools serving Native students is an important first step in the larger policy discussion on Native education and charter schools. This brief provides the latest data available from the National Alliance for Public Charter School's database of public charter schools serving a high-concentration of Native youth and those operating on tribal lands.

The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has been studying the four-day school week since 2015. Since then, the phenomenon of the four-day school week has spread into non-rural areas and interest appears to be growing. Given these apparent changes, the author wanted to know more about recent trends in the initiative. As districts continue to adopt the schedule, she would like to know what this trend means for students and communities in the long run. Is this a rural innovation born out of necessity that with accountability and strategic use can result in improved student opportunities? Or is this fundamentally a negative trend, one where districts have been forced into the schedule to meet increasing demands on a shrinking budget? Under what conditions can the four-day school week result in sustained benefits for students, if at all? In this brief, she responds to common questions about the four-day school week and concludes with some questions of her own.

In 2015, the Data-Informed Accessibility--Making Optimal Needs-based Decisions (DIAMOND) project received funding from an Enhanced Assessment Initiative grant to collect information that would support the development of professional development modules for educators making decisions within new accessibility frameworks. More accessibility features and accommodations are available to a wider range of students than ever before, which puts a greater burden on educators. Not only are educators expected to determine which accessibility features and accommodations help their students on state assessments, they are supposed to incorporate these same accessibility features and accommodations into their instruction and formative assessments. Previous research shows that they often struggle to do this (Altman, Lazarus, Quenemoen, Kearns, Quenemoen, & Thurlow, 2010; Langley & Olsen, 2003). To address this issue, the DIAMOND project conducted phone interviews with educators to highlight effective practices being used to implement accessibility features and accommodations in their classrooms during instruction and during assessments. For this study, educators were asked about two kinds of accessibility features (universal features and designated features) and about accommodations. Universal features are accessibility supports that are available to all students as they access instructional or assessment content. Designated features are accessibility supports that are available to any student for whom the need has been indicated by an educator (or team of educators including the parents/guardian and the student if appropriate) who are familiar with the student's characteristics and needs. Accommodations are changes in procedures or materials that ensure equitable access to instructional and assessment content and generate valid assessment results for students who need them.

Career Technical Education (CTE) teacher recruitment is a challenge that has dogged state CTE leaders for decades. According to a recent survey of State CTE Directors, 98 percent said that increasing access to industry experts is a high priority in their state. And 20.4 percent of rural districts with CTE teacher vacancies report that CTE positions were either very difficult or impossible to fill. This brief is the fourth, and final, installment in the "CTE on the Frontier" series, which examines challenges and strategies for expanding access to high-quality career pathways in rural areas. The brief explores one of the most pressing challenges rural schools and institutions face: strengthening the pipeline of qualified CTE teachers and faculty. Recruiting and retaining qualified teachers can make or break a CTE program. This brief examines some of the following approaches states are taking to support rural CTE teachers: (1) Recruiting within the community by expanding grow-your-own teacher academy pathways or reducing barriers to entry for industry professionals; (2) Innovating to compete with industry by valuing work experience in teacher and faculty salary schedules; (3) Restructuring new teacher induction programs to extend supports and mentorship opportunities throughout the first year, and providing a continuum of supports for veteran teachers; (4) Strengthening relationships with traditional teacher preparation pipelines; and (5) Adopting a diversified approach to recruiting and training new instructors, establishing multiple pathways into CTE classrooms.

This brief tells the story of Lumina Foundation's and states' efforts to promote an equity agenda for higher education, featuring the 2015 Equity Policy Academy-- which focused on improving educational equity for students from historically underserved groups--as a turning point. Based primarily on interviews with Lumina staff and key state leaders from the five states that participated in the Academy--Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Vermont, and Virginia--this story is designed to highlight the unique path each state took to prioritize equity in postsecondary attainment, and inspire ideas for leaders in other states.

The Early Learning Challenge (ELC) program awarded more than $1 billion in four-year grants to 20 States to implement comprehensive and cohesive high-quality early learning systems that support young children with high needs and their families. A key lever in making these improvements was the enhancement of States' Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). A QRIS is designed to measure, rate, and dissemination information about the quality of the early learning and development programs that participate in the QRIS. Through ELC, States worked across agencies to improve, or in some cases, reinvent their QRIS. This report summarizes the progress ELC States made since the program began in 2012. It includes selected examples of key initiatives States undertook to create a comprehensive system of high-quality programs for young children and their families. Specifically, it looks at States' efforts to refine their QRIS; examine progress elements (including early learning standards, screenings, and assessment systems); engage and support families; support the early learning workforce; enhance early childhood data systems; and foster community connections. The content was drawn from States' ELC Annual and Final Performance Reports. As a result of the efforts States have undertaken, it can now be said that more children with high needs are enrolled in high-quality programs and more programs participate in the States' QRIS. States made progress in developing and strengthening their comprehensive early learning and development systems. States used the ELC program to make advancements and drive positive changes in their early learning and development systems, often in the face of significant challenges. Other States are benefiting from these experiences and lessons as they work on improving their own systems.

The civic education policy framework and gap analysis tool are intended to guide state leaders as they address the complexities of preparing students for college, career and civic life. They allow for adaptation to state- and site-specific circumstances and may be adopted in whole or in piecemeal fashion, according to states' individual circumstances. In addition to the civic education policy framework and gap analysis tool, this resource includes examples to demonstrate how current state efforts are leading to significant, positive changes in civic education for all students, P-20.

This resource was prepared for an Early Learning Challenge (ELC) State in response to a request for information about initiatives to improve the quality of child care and early education provided by family, friends, and neighbors in the 20 RTT-ELC States. This information will be helpful to other States as they consider how to continue to increase the quality of early learning for all children. To address this request, ELC TA reviewed "2016 Annual Performance Report" (APR) data from the Phase 2 and Phase 3 ELC States and the "2016 Final Performance Report" (FPR) data from the Phase 1 ELC States. These reports were submitted to the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services for review in the spring of 2017. Additional examples of initiatives to support Family, Friend, and Neighbor child care providers in both ELC and non-ELC States were found in 2015 report, "Supporting License-Exempt Family Child Care," by the National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance. The first section of this document describes efforts in nine ELC States (Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington) to support Family, Friend, and Neighbor providers. The second section describes selected efforts in additional States. Initiatives to support Family, Friends, and Neighbors providers includes assistance with transitioning from license-exempt care to licensed care, help with participating in their State's Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS), professional development, opportunities for learning in peer cohorts, technical assistance, peer mentoring, access to online resources, partnerships with libraries, financial incentives, and a creation of a task force to understand the issues.