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This report describes the development, functions, and operations of the Delaware Valley Community College Service Center in Pike County, Pennsylvania, which is designed to provide diversified and comprehensive two-year postsecondary education to residents of a large, rural area without a postsecondary institution. The Center is sponsored by the Delaware Valley School District and operated through a contract with Northampton County Area Community College (NCACC), the nearest community college. The policies, procedures, programs and courses of NCACC apply to the Center and its director is responsible to the NCACC president, but the Center retains local control and initiative through its own Operating Board. Funding is provided by the school district, student tuition and state reimbursement. The Center has no facilities of its own but provides a wide range of associate degree and certificate programs in liberal arts and occupational areas and non-credit adult education courses utilizing leased and borrowed facilities and part-time faculty. The Center's Cooperative Commuting College Division makes available specialized high-cost career programs through contractual arrangements with neighboring colleges in New York State. The Center is not offered as a model, but components may serve as a guide to be adapted by other rural areas. (JDS)

This program focused on work in elementary mathematics and science with activities using Lego bricks and plates. Pre-service teachers self-evaluated teaching efficacy beliefs after a 6-hour, professional development session. Participant ratings of overall teaching efficacy and personal efficacy appeared to be acceptable, while participant rating of teaching outcome expectancy was at a lower level.

University faculty responsibilities include teaching, research, and service. The authors' study aspired to ask faculty their opinions of their experiences while serving on standing committees to better understand the thoughts behind the culture and make suggestions for improvement to the university. An IRB permit 22-0566 was obtained from our institution through the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. A nine-question survey consisting of Likert-style and open-ended questions was delivered through the online survey method, Qualtrics, to 234 persons. Participants consisted of faculty educators. Faculty offered suggestions for the overall improvement on placing higher value on committee service.

A January 2024 survey found that 72 percent of parents had considered a new school for their children in the past year. And in 2025, Texas and Tennessee are poised to become the next states to enact education savings account (ESA) programs, potentially giving millions more students the education options that their parents want for them. As a result, alternatives to traditional public education are booming. From 2010 to 2021, the number of charter schools increased by 2,500, while the number of public schools decreased by 2,100. Public charter school enrollment skyrocketed over that time from 1.8 million to 3.7 million students. And the number of students residing in states that have enacted ESAs now stands at nearly 22 million. However the benefits of school choice are constrained by narrow standardized testing options, which influence curriculum and teaching approaches. This brief argues that testing choice will relieve educators of the burden of teaching to tests that do not meet their diverse approaches. It also recommends state policymakers should provide for a diverse suite of testing choices at the K-12 and college entrance levels.

The "Fall 2024 Snapshot on International Student Enrollment" findings are based on responses from over 690 U.S. higher education institutions on current patterns in international student enrollment as of fall 2024. The report, conducted by the Institute of International Education (IIE) and ten partner higher education associations, complements the "Open Doors® Report on International Educational Exchange." The findings from the Fall 2024 Snapshot reflect a continued rise in international student enrollment numbers. A 3% growth in international student totals (undergraduate, graduate, non-degree, and Optional Practical Training [OPT]) builds on the 7% growth in 2023/24 and the 12% growth in 2022/23 according to "Open Doors." This marks four years of international student increases since the COVID-19 pandemic. 84% of reporting institutions indicate that financial support for their international student recruitment efforts is the same or higher than in the previous year. U.S. institutions report working with current international students, collaborating with agents, building international partnerships, and conducting in-person recruitment events to support outreach and recruitment. [This report was co-produced with the Association of International Enrollment Management (AIRC).]

Recent higher education accountability policies and proposals have often linked programs' or institutions' federal aid access to students' postcompletion earnings. But proposals differ regarding when to measure earnings. Policymakers may want to know how fast earnings typically grow and when in an individual's career earnings growth rates change. To inform policies that measure earnings after students complete a credential, this brief examines average earnings trajectories for the first 5 years after graduation using program-level earnings data in the College Scorecard and for 25 years in the American Community Survey (ACS). Findings suggest that the effects of an accountability policy that measures earnings after graduation can be sensitive to which year is chosen, particularly for bachelor's and professional degrees.

Teacher shortages and lack of teacher diversity have led to growing efforts nationally to recruit teaching assistants (TAs) to be classroom teachers. Substitute teachers are not typically considered in these efforts. We pair longitudinal administrative data from a mid-sized urban district with survey follow-up to address how TAs and substitute teachers contribute to filling staffing shortages and diversifying the teacher workforce. While substitute teachers are rarely included in formal Grow-Your-Own efforts, they bring racial and ethnic diversity to the district in similar ways to TAs yet face fewer barriers to becoming classroom teachers. As a result, they do so at much higher rates and help prevent vacancies in hard-to-staff classrooms.

Attending college is a significant human capital investment but only about 60% of those who start college will have a completed degree six years later. This makes identifying the skills associated with college success an important policy concern. We surveyed over 1,100 entering college freshmen, majoring in business and engineering at a public university in the US, and combined this information with administrative data to create a comprehensive data set that, in addition to the usual academic performance data, cognitive ability measures, and demographics, also included measures of non-cognitive skills, personality traits, student expectations about college success and performance at graduation. With this information, we analyzed if students' subjective expectations about their future success in college are related to non-cognitive skills and whether they are realistic, compared to student's performance at graduation. We identify students performing below and above objective expectations, both at the end of their freshmen year and at graduation, and study non-cognitive skills related to their objective performance. We find that non-cognitive skills are associated with academic subjective expectations of college success and objective performance in college, even after controlling for cognitive ability. However, many students enter college with unrealistic subjective expectations about their future performance and this could influence their on-time graduation.

Evaluations of Early College, a type of intervention that enables simultaneous enrollment in secondary and post-secondary courses in the United States, consistently find positive effects on educational attainment across racial and socioeconomic groups. Unlike Early College initiatives in other states, Massachusetts launched Early College in Fall 2018, enabling a within-school as well as a whole-school intervention, in which each participating school may enroll some or all of its students in Early College, with guiding principles of equitable access, guided academic pathways, student support, and connection to career. This study uses propensity score matching to evaluate the impact of participating in Massachusetts Early College on students' educational attainment. Positive effects found on college enrollment, with statistically significant positive interactions between the treatment and being socioeconomically disadvantaged, and on college persistence, with statistically significant positive interactions between the treatment and being Latinx, suggest the intervention may help promote equitable access to higher education in Massachusetts. Massachusetts is a local-control state, where public school governance is legally delegated to district and school boards located in the communities they serve, as opposed to the state government, making it more difficult to have state-wide interventions. The flexibility of Massachusetts Early College renders it more easily replicated in local-control states, than the whole school models previously studied.

This article examines the risk of crossover contamination in individual-level randomization, a common concern in experimental research, in the context of a large-enrollment college course. While individual-level randomization is more efficient for assessing program effectiveness, it also increases the potential for control group students to cross over into the treatment group, thus biasing treatment effect estimates. This study provides empirical evidence from a pilot intervention in two sections of a college-level introductory chemistry course, where a course-specific chatbot was introduced. We tested two randomization strategies: simple student-level randomization and laboratory-level randomization. We hypothesized that the greatest risk for crossover would have occurred under the simple individual randomization approach, however, no crossover occurred in either condition. Survey responses and system usage data indicate that this was not due to a lack of interaction among students or disinterest in the chatbot. These findings suggest that student-level randomization, even in an in-person course setting, can proceed with minimal risk of contamination for testing our focal intervention.

This statutory report presents the activities and accomplishments of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General (OIG) from April 1, 2024, through September 30, 2024. The audits, investigations, and related work highlighted in the report are products of OIG's mission to identify and stop fraud, waste, and abuse; and promote accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness through OIG's oversight of the Department's programs and operations. Sections include: (1) Pandemic Relief Aid Oversight; (2) Disaster Recovery Oversight; (3) Federal Student Aid Programs and Operations; (4) Elementary and Secondary Education and Rehabilitation Services Programs; (5) Department Management and Operations; (6) Other OIG Efforts; and (7) Required Reporting.

While U.S. voters delivered a significant change in the 2024 federal elections, they opted for steady leadership at the state level. No state board of education shifted in partisan control, and only five seats saw a shift in political party out of 27 races that were contested in the general election. This policy update looks at the results of governor elections, elected chief state school officers, elected state boards, and ballot initiatives.

In the fall of 2019, the City University of New York (CUNY) Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) provided colleges with updated guidance for designing and delivering evidence-based corequisite courses and set a timeline for the phaseout of traditional, standalone remediation by fall 2022. This CAPR report describes findings from research exploring the first year of full-scale implementation of corequisite English and math courses in the system. Drawing on interview and focus-group data with OAA administrators and with faculty and staff at seven associate-granting CUNY colleges (five of which are community colleges), the report examines how the colleges managed the transition to fully scaled corequisite courses and structured their corequisite offerings and the implications of those choices for early implementation. The authors find that all CUNY colleges participating in the study had fully scaled corequisite courses in math and English by spring 2023 and that for many of them, this marked the culmination of over a decade of experimentation with and expansion of corequisites. Also, due to the autonomy granted to colleges by OAA, the authors observe variation in scaling timelines and some variation in corequisite models, as well as in faculty and staff engagement. Interviewees identified important facilitators of the scaling process, such as OAA's mandate and timeline for scaling and financial support for course and professional development. They also identified a key challenge in understanding the implications of implementation and scaling, namely, that the co-occurrence of a new placement algorithm, the mandate, and the pandemic-induced shift to online instruction made it difficult to determine how any one of these factors contributed to changes in student success in introductory English and math courses. The report concludes with a discussion of issues to consider when scaling corequisite courses.

This paper examines the effects of Pell Grant eligibility on student outcomes. Using a regression discontinuity (RD) design and a partial identification approach, the study provides bounds on the treatment effects that account for selection bias arising from the loss of grant eligibility. While initial eligibility is determined by financial need alone, students must achieve Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) to retain the grant. Students eligible for the maximum grant aid are 26 percentage points less likely to persist in the year they lose grant eligibility than those with less aid. This negative effect on persistence extends to graduation; these students are 8 percentage points less likely to graduate within 4 years. Furthermore, these two groups of students differ in their underlying characteristics, which introduces attrition bias into the estimates. Finally, to address this selection bias, I provide bounds on the effects of Pell Grant on student outcomes. While naive RD estimates find no effect on completion rates, bounding estimates reveal that students eligible for the maximum grant aid are up to 4, 2, and 2 percentage points more likely to graduate from a 4-year institution within 4, 5, and 6 years compared to those with less aid, respectively. Furthermore, these eligible students graduate with a higher GPA than previously estimated. These positive effects are larger than those found in earlier studies.

The transition from high school into postsecondary education and a career has become particularly challenging given today's complex, fast-moving, and highly technological economy. To combat this problem, one approach widely adopted in the United States is the career academy model, which combines a college-preparatory and career and technical curriculum with a career theme and is often structured as a small learning community within a larger high school. Shifts in the labor market, reforms to secondary education, and a growth in both high school graduation and postsecondary enrollment rates across the United States prompt new questions about how participating in career academies may affect current students' academic and labor outcomes. MDRC is currently conducting another long-term randomized controlled trial of career academies to help answer these questions. This study explores California Partnership Academies (CPAs), which are partially state-funded career academies within high schools across California. The study will follow participants for the eight years after expected high school graduation and look at the impacts on students' high school, postsecondary education, and employment and earnings outcomes. This report explores the impacts of CPAs on students' high school graduation and college readiness at the end of high school as well as their college enrollment during the first year after graduation. It also examines the differences between the school experiences of the students who were offered a spot in a CPA (CPA group) and of those who were not offered a spot (non-CPA group), as well as some of the early effects of the program on teachers' attention to and expectations of students and on students' collaboration with each other, their perceived relevance of schoolwork, and their plans after high school.

The U.S. Department of Education's (Department's) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) provides this resource to assist school communities with ensuring that artificial intelligence (AI) is used in a nondiscriminatory manner in the nation's elementary and secondary schools and institutions of higher education consistent with federal civil rights laws. Within this resource, AI means a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments. AI technologies have the potential to enhance opportunities and increase educational equity for all students. At the same time, the growing use of AI in schools, including for instructional and school safety purposes, and AI's ability to operate on a mass scale can create or contribute to discrimination. The contents of this guidance do not have the force and effect of law and do not bind the public or create new legal standards. This document is designed to provide clarity to the public regarding existing legal requirements under the civil rights laws that OCR enforces.

This dissertation investigates the interplay of academic preparedness, imposter syndrome, and resilience among low-income male African American students, focusing on their readiness for college and subsequent success. Using a phenomenological approach, the study captures the lived experiences of these students and reveals systemic challenges and psychological barriers. Findings indicate that disparities in academic preparedness, including unequal access to quality education and experienced teachers, significantly impact college readiness. Imposter syndrome is shown to diminish academic confidence and performance, while resilience proves essential in overcoming these challenges. The study also evaluates the effectiveness of support programs like GEAR UP and TRIO, demonstrating their critical role in promoting college preparedness. The research concludes that tailored interventions addressing the unique needs of male African American students are necessary for fostering academic success and equity. Implications for policy include advocating for modifications to ensure equal access to rigorous curricula, skilled teachers, and adequate guidance counseling. This study contributes to the broader discourse on educational equity and resilience in overcoming academic barriers.

Recent data from Chicago Public Schools (CPS) show that active English Learners were less likely to graduate from high school (77% did so in 2023) than their peers (85%) and less likely to enroll in college (56% of 2022 English Learners high school graduates enrolled in college compared to 66 percent of their non-English Learners high school graduate peers), drawing attention to what supports these students need and what barriers they face on the road to college. To understand the academic performance in high school, college enrollment, and college persistence of English Learners, this study highlights metrics for former English Learners and different groups of active English Learners (at the time of enrollment in ninth grade). The focus of this study is on understanding different indicators of academic performance in high school, college enrollment, and college persistence of English Learners--including variation in attainment among active and former English Learners--to support their path to high school graduation and access to college. Using three cohorts of students who were first-time ninth-graders in the fall of 2014, 2015, and 2016 where 33% of students were English Learners, the authors conclude that English Learners are not perpetually struggling, as publicly reported numbers suggest, but specific groups of English Learners need more support. There are some commonalities among English Learners, but also some key differences, suggesting that there are different strategies that would be effective in supporting different English Learners groups. [This report was co-produced by the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice.]

This appendix volume supplements report NCEE 2025-005r, describing the effects of two experimental Pell Grant expansions: the first allowed income-eligible students with a bachelor's degree to obtain this form of federal financial aid for short-term occupational training programs and the second allowed income-eligible students to obtain this aid for very short-term programs lasting as little as eight weeks. The report updated earlier results from a rigorous evaluation of the experiments conducted by the U.S. Department of Education's (ED's) Institute of Education Sciences, adding new information about the experiments' effects on employment and earnings outcomes. This appendix volume similarly updates the evaluation's previous published appendix to detail the steps taken to assess these effects. The volume first describes the Pell Grant experiments as overseen by ED's Office of Federal Student Aid, including information about the schools offering the experimental Pell Grants. The next sections document how the study was conducted, including the research questions asked and the approach used to answer the research questions, additional details supporting the key findings of the study, and additional analyses to assess the sensitivity of the key findings.

Pell Grants are the cornerstone of federal financial aid for students with low income who are enrolled in postsecondary education. Currently, these grants are available only to those who seek an initial undergraduate degree or credential requiring at least a typical semester of instruction. Because these rules may restrict access to programs providing skills needed for new or better jobs, in 2011 the U.S. Department of Education (ED) began pilots of two experimental expansions to Pell Grant eligibility. The first experiment allowed income-eligible students with a bachelor's degree to obtain Pell Grants for short-term occupational training programs. The second experiment allowed income-eligible students to obtain Pell Grants for very short-term programs lasting as little as eight weeks. This report updates earlier results from a rigorous evaluation of the experiments conducted by ED's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), adding new information about the experiments' impacts on labor market success. This fuller picture could help Congress as it considers legislation to make Pell Grants for short-term occupational training permanent policy.

There is a large and growing number of non-degree credential offerings between a high school diploma and a bachelor's degree, as well as degree programs beyond a bachelor's degree. Nevertheless, research on the financial returns to non-degree credentials and degree-granting programs is often narrow and siloed. To fill this gap, we leverage a national sample of individuals across nine MSAs and four industries to examine the relative financial returns to a variety of non-degree credentials and degree programs. Leveraging fixed-effect models, we explore the relationship between completing a credential or degree and earnings premiums. We find that an associate's, bachelor's, master's and doctorate degree follows a similar model of returns in which the number of schooling years is linearly related to proportional earnings premiums. However, students completing sub-baccalaureate certificates, post-baccalaureate certificates, and non-school credentials appear to get larger financial returns for less time. Furthermore, while the returns to both non-degree credentials and degree granting programs generally favored males over females and non-binary persons, this was not the case for race/ethnicity. Although individuals from Asian and White racial/ethnic groups often maintained an advantage in traditional education settings, Black individuals earned greater premiums from non-school credentials than White individuals, which may represent an opportunity to close racial/ethnic gaps in earnings.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is the proactive concept of creating a student-focused learning environment that meets students' variable needs. This qualitative phenomenological study interviewed five active graduate education faculty members on their knowledge and resource support with UDL initiatives. Findings included a variety of knowledge sources for UDL and inclusive initiatives, support services, and constraints on multiple levels. Discussion includes themes of faculty desire to promote and support inclusivity, UDL and professional licensure examination incongruencies, and the grassroots nature of UDL initiatives. Implications for practice include adopting UDL on a larger scale, designing flexible licensure exams, and recognizing and addressing student needs holistically.

The landscape of educational research necessitates sophisticated approaches to scholarly communication, demanding researchers to adeptly navigate diverse methodological traditions. This article provides systematic guidelines for academic writing that transcend methodological boundaries, offering practical strategies for crafting clear, ethical, and impactful scholarly work. Emphasizing the importance of structure, style, and scholarly conventions, the article addresses the complexities of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research. Key guidelines include adherence to ethical standards, clarity and conciseness in communication, and proper citation practices to maintain academic integrity. The article also offers insights into adapting dissertations and theses into journal articles, highlighting the challenges and opportunities for early-career researchers. As educational research evolves, the need for effective academic writing remains paramount, ensuring that valuable insights are shared and built upon within the scholarly community. By fostering excellence in academic writing, researchers can significantly contribute to the advancement of educational theory and practice.

The Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education provides funding and priority recommendations for Nebraska State College, University of Nebraska, and Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture at Curtis (NCTA) capital construction budget requests, as outlined in Nebraska's Constitution and Statutes. The overarching principle used in this process is to provide safe, functional, well-utilized, and well-maintained facilities that support institutional efforts to provide exemplary programs. Section I of this report outlines the Commission's recommendations to continue reaffirmation funding of all partially funded capital construction projects. Section II outlines the State College, University, and NCTA capital construction budget requests as submitted by their respective governing board. These requests include Task Force for Building Renewal requests and individual capital construction budget requests from the State Colleges and University. Funding recommendations are provided in Section III of the report. The Commission prioritized one sector initiative, thirteen individual capital construction projects, and LB309 funding requests for the 2025-2027 biennium as outlined in Section IV. The Commission's prioritized list is aimed at identifying from a statewide perspective the most urgent capital construction needs for the coming biennium. The prioritization is designed to assist the Governor and Legislature in developing a strategy to address the most critical institutional facility needs from a statewide perspective.

Nebraska's constitution and state statutes require the Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education (CCPE) to review the budget requests of the University of Nebraska, the Nebraska State College System, and the community colleges in light of specific criteria set forth in the statutes. The Commission also makes recommendations on major statewide funding issues and initiatives, as suggested by statute. The Commission's recommendations begin with a discussion of statewide funding issues and initiatives. This biennium, the Commission recommends that the state continue to concentrate on two statewide issues: providing financial aid for students from low-income families and continued state support for public postsecondary institutions. After considering statewide issues, the recommendations turn to the institutional requests. In the process of developing the public postsecondary education budget recommendations for the 2025-27 biennium, the Commission reviewed 15 requests as part of the continuation budget requests, four requests for new and expanded programs, and the community college state aid and dual enrollment request. In its recommendations, the Commission recognizes that financing higher education is a shared responsibility between the state and students but believes that the preponderance of the responsibility for affordable public higher education rests with the state.

This fifth of six briefs exploring data from the 2020-2021 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) data, released earlier this year, explores the access of students with disabilities to the educational opportunities that make college possible for most students: SAT and ACT testing, Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) coursework, and dual enrollment programs in colleges and universities.

The purpose of this report is to provide findings from the Abt Global independent evaluation of the PreK-12 STEM Pathway program. The Community Training and Assistance Center (CTAC), a nonprofit organization focused on supporting educational innovation and community change, received an Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Early Phase grant from the U.S. Department of Education in 2018 to develop and implement the PreK-12 STEM Pathway intervention in California's Tracy Unified School District (TUSD). This report examines the implementation of the PreK-12 STEM Pathway program from school year 2019-20 through school year 2022-23. It also examines the effects of the PreK-12 STEM Pathway program on English language arts (ELA), math, and science achievement (collectively, "academic achievement"). To implement this program, CTAC and TUSD developed a multi-tiered system of leadership teams, made up of teachers from across the district, school and district leaders, and STEM industry and civic community leaders. These teams developed, revised, and trained the districts' teachers on 52 multidisciplinary, hands-on, project-based curricular units for every core PreK-12 math and science course. The project evaluation found one positive and statistically significant finding for the subgroup analysis run on the impact on Multilingual Learners (MLL) students in science. The study did not find any other statistically significant effects of the PreK-12 STEM Pathway program on achievement or college readiness outcomes. The evaluators consider this finding to be preliminary and worthy of further exploration. Lessons learned from this study will inform continued efforts to develop and implement high-quality, hands-on STEM experiences for students, as well as have implications for STEM curriculum development and STEM research more broadly. The Technical Appendix includes Appendix A. Fidelity of Implementation Matrix; Appendix B. Fidelity of Implementation Findings; Appendix C. Impact Study Design Supplemental Information; Appendix D. Baseline Equivalence and Representativeness; and Appendix E. Impact Study Findings Tables.

This research study aims to explore the current state of EFL student teacher education programmes in preparing teachers to teach English to students with special educational needs (SEN) in Egypt and other Arab-speaking countries, and subsequently, to propose a framework for preparing English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers to teach students with SEN in Egypt based on experiences in Egypt and other Arab-speaking countries. This involves identifying the main challenges and needs of EFL student teachers and their educators in relation to teaching English to students with SEN in Egypt based on experiences in other Arab-speaking countries along with the existing policies and practices that support or hinder the implementation of inclusive education for EFL learners with SEN in Arab-speaking countries in general and Egypt in particular. The proposed framework is based on a review of the literature on inclusive education (IE) and foreign language teaching for SEN learners, as well as semi-structured interviews with 50 EFL teacher educators from seven Egyptian universities. The study identifies three main components of the framework: (1) developing general and pedagogical knowledge and skills of EFL teachers to cater for the diverse needs of SEN learners, (2) enhancing self-efficacy beliefs and positive attitudes of EFL teachers towards IE and SEN learners, and (3) incorporating relevant information and communication technology (ICT) tools to support EFL teaching and learning for SEN learners. The paper also discusses the challenges and implications of implementing the framework in the Arab context, especially in Egypt, and suggests directions for future research. [This paper was published in "CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education" v88 n1 p287-316 2024.]

College presidents are receiving heightened public attention and scrutiny, but few data exist that demonstrate which college presidents are most effective at improving student outcomes. This report ranks over 400 current and former college and university presidents on how much they improved access, affordability, and student success during their tenure as president. The rankings reveal that some college presidents are superstars. While president, these individuals cut tuition costs, increased the share of students from low-income and underrepresented racial backgrounds, and increased graduation rates. Other presidents, however, did little to improve these outcomes, and some presidents oversaw steep declines in these outcomes. The author argues that higher education boards, students, and policymakers should pay more attention to how presidents improve student outcomes. Rankings such as these could provide some much-needed pressure on college presidents to elevate their performance on improving access, affordability, and student success.

At a time when Americans are divided, patriotism is declining, and liberal democratic norms are threatened, working Americans, more than college-educated Americans, take appropriate pride in the special contributions of their country. The extreme right and left have for too long engaged in a seesaw of bad policies that foster illiberalism. Policymakers can and should nurture and foster the expansion of programs that will strengthen social cohesion, restore social mobility, and sustain American's grand experiment in self-governance. This in-depth Progressive Policy report outlines nine ideas local, state, and federal policymakers can adopt to help public schools -- and colleges -- return to the central goal of public education. The primary mission, encapsulated by the late president of the American Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker, is to "teach children what it means to be an American," by which he meant "a common set of values and beliefs" expressed most vividly in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This report is the seventh in a series of Campaign Blueprints that can help Democrats reconnect with the working-class voters who have historically been the party's mainstay.

The goal of Smithsonian Science for North and South Carolina Classrooms was to provide teachers with ongoing, differentiated professional development and research-based curricular materials to improve elementary student achievement in science, mathematics, and reading. This work used an inquiry-based science curriculum, Smithsonian Science for the Classroom, which is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and was implemented in Grades 3-5 within predominantly rural North and South Carolina school districts serving high-needs students. The Center for Research in Educational Policy (CREP) at the University of Memphis, a State of Tennessee Center of Excellence, was the independent third-party evaluator. CREP implemented a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) to collect and analyze data using a rigorous, mixed-methods approach, including quantitative analyses of student achievement data from the Stanford-10 and state assessments, and qualitative analyses of classroom observation data, as well as teacher feedback from professional development surveys, module logs, and focus groups. For this study, 36 schools (including one split cohort being treated as one school) in seven districts within North and South Carolina were randomly assigned to treatment and comparison groups. The study cohort, followed over three academic years (2020-21 through 2022-23), was composed of more than 1,600 third grade (2020-21) students in these schools. In the comparison condition, schools used their business-as-usual science curricula and teacher professional development and did not receive Smithsonian Science curricular materials or professional development. As the pretests for achievement outcomes, students took the Abbreviated Battery of the Stanford Achievement Test Series, Tenth Edition (Stanford-10) in Reading and Math in spring of 2021 (the cohort's third grade year). The main findings and posttests included the combined sample (i.e., both states combined) for (a) the Stanford-10 Science subtest, which was administered in the spring of 2023 (the cohort's fifth grade year), and (b) spring 2023 standardized state assessment scores in Reading and Math. Using a hierarchical linear model (HLM) with school as a random effect, the analysis of the effect of Smithsonian Science for the three main findings after several years of disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic was (a) positive (g = 0.18) and statistically significant (p = 0.032) on the Stanford-10 science assessment and (b) positive for both Reading (g = 0.10) and Math (g = 0.16), meaning students in the treatment group performed better than the control group, but the effects were not statistically significant. Teachers were generally positive in terms of the professional development provided, and feedback on the module logs largely supported the effectiveness of the professional development and fidelity of implementation. Classroom observations further supported the effectiveness of the professional development and fidelity to inquiry-based practices in treatment classrooms (e.g., use of experiential hands-on learning and level of class time dedicated to inquiry-based science). With instructional time for science lagging other subject areas, and as learning recovery in reading and math after COVID-19 receive national attention, the results demonstrate that ongoing, differentiated, high-quality professional learning and high-quality instructional materials for science instruction can support student achievement in science, math, and reading.

Leveraging rich data on the universe of Texas high school graduates, we estimate how the relationship between geographic access to public two- and four-year postsecondary institutions and postsecondary outcomes varies across race-ethnicity and socioeconomic status. We find that students are sensitive to the distance they must travel to access public colleges and universities, but there are heterogeneous effects across students -- particularly with regard to distance to public two-year colleges (i.e., community colleges). White, Asian, and higher-income students who live in a community college desert (i.e., at least 30 minutes driving time from the nearest public two-year college) substitute towards four-year colleges and are more likely to complete bachelor's degrees. Meanwhile, Black, Hispanic, and lower-income students respond to living in a community college desert by forgoing college enrollment altogether, reducing the likelihood that they earn associate's and reducing the likelihood that they ultimately transfer to four-year colleges and earn bachelor's degrees. These relationships persist up to eight years following high school graduation, resulting in substantial long-term gaps in overall degree attainment by race-ethnicity and income in areas with limited postsecondary access.

A growing body of research has documented extensive credit loss among transfer students. However, the field lacks theoretically driven and empirically supported frameworks that can guide credit loss research and reforms. We develop and then test a comprehensive framework designed to address this gap using novel administrative credit loss data from Texas. Our results demonstrate how the likelihood of credit loss varies across course characteristics, majors, pretransfer academics, student characteristics, and sending and receiving institutions. Additionally, we are able to disentangle general credit loss from major credit loss and examine how they vary across institutions, majors, and the combination of both. The extensive variation in credit loss among universities in particular underscores the need for future research and reform.

Although community colleges have served as a gateway to universities for millions of students--disproportionately so for students from populations historically underrepresented in higher education--prior research has demonstrated that the majority of vertical transfer students lose at least some of their pretransfer credits. However, researchers examining how credit loss relates to subsequent college outcomes have been hindered by data limitations. For this study, we drew from the literature on academic momentum and examined the relationship between credit loss, institutional retention, and postsecondary persistence. Our use of novel administrative data from Texas enabled us to disentangle major credit loss from general credit loss and study the contribution of each credit loss type to posttransfer outcomes. Our analyses show that both forms of credit loss are inversely related to institutional retention, but the relationships between credit loss and postsecondary persistence are far less consistent. We found evidence suggesting that major credit loss is more strongly related to both retention and persistence than general credit loss. We did not find evidence that the relationship between credit loss and posttransfer outcomes is moderated by students' race/ethnicity, economic status, or gender, and we found only limited evidence of moderation by major.

Using National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data, this report presents national and state-by-state findings on the postsecondary enrollment and completion outcomes of high school students who began taking dual enrollment (DE) college courses in fall 2015, tracked for four years after high school. This report describes the size and significance of the DE population for postsecondary institutions and states and compare postsecondary outcomes among dual enrollees to outcomes of other recent high school graduates entering higher education without prior DE experience. Given previous research indicating that low-income, Black, and Hispanic high school students are severely underrepresented in DE coursework, the authors further disaggregate results for these subgroups to highlight the potential for DE to strengthen high-school-to-college-and-career transitions and increase equity for underserved communities. Students who took DE courses in high school enrolled in college at rates well above the national average for high school graduates and had higher award completion rates compared to recent high school graduates without prior DE.

This paper examines the long-term impact of the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA) and the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) on postsecondary education outcomes, with a focus on historically underserved students. MERA aimed to improve educational standards and close achievement gaps through the introduction of MCAS, a statewide assessment system, and the high school Competency Determination (CD) requirement for graduation. More than two decades later, questions remain about how these reforms have influenced students' readiness for and success in postsecondary education. This analysis addresses three key areas: (1) Changes in 10th-grade MCAS performance over time; (2) Student participation and success in key college readiness benchmarks such as advanced coursework, SAT, and high school graduation; and (3) Postsecondary enrollment and degree completion rates.

For any dual enrollment (DE) reform to be effective, educators must acknowledge and understand the diverse experiences of all DE students, especially those from historically underrepresented populations. As part of CCRC's DEEP research, the author of this brief investigates the experiences of students historically underserved in DE to understand what these students want from their DE programs and the educators who lead them. An analysis of focus group interviews with 97 predominantly Black, Hispanic, and low-income students uncovered six themes that the author frames as students' wants: (1) Students want to know about DE options earlier; (2) Students want well-informed DE advisors who empower them; (3) Students want their DE courses to be aligned with career and academic pathways in their fields of interest; (4) Students want engaging learning experiences in their online courses; (5) Students want to know how to balance the high school experience and DE coursetaking; and (6) Students want to know how to find scholarships and manage debt to help them attend college after high school. For each of these six wants, the brief describes the students' perspectives and presents research-based strategies educators can use to support DE students in the realization of these wants. The brief also outlines questions educators can ask their students to gain a better understanding of their experiences.

Job Corps is the largest and most comprehensive education and job training program in the United States for young people ages 16 to 24 who are not in school or working. Most students live at and take classes at its approximately 120 residential centers. To explore ways to improve student outcomes and reduce per-student costs, Job Corps pilot tested two nonresidential models where students received education and training at colleges, supported by intensive personal and career counseling, instead of at a center. The two pilot programs were: (1) The Job Corps Scholars (JCS) pilot program consisted of 26 colleges each delivering its own version of the Job Corps program to eligible young people; and (2) In the Idaho Job Corps (IJC) pilot program, Idaho paired its Boise Job Corps center with a nearby community college and opened three addition fully nonresidential programs at other colleges. The two pilot programs together offered 30 diverse examples of college-partnered Job Corps programs to study. The implementation and outcomes study focused on: (1) The types of students who enrolled in these programs; (2) The ability of colleges to serve young people eligible for Job Corps, who typically face more barriers than other students; and (3) The outcomes achieved by students in the pilot programs.

More than half of states have implemented tuition-free college policies aimed at reducing attendance costs and incentivizing enrollment. We review the academic literature on the design features and impacts of these tuition-free policies, and we analyze an initiative Virginia implemented in 2021 called Get a Skill, Get a Job, Get Ahead (G3), which provides tuition-free community college to students enrolled in eligible associate degree, certificate, and noncredit occupational training programs in five high-demand fields. Our descriptive analysis of G3 from 2016-17 through 2022-23 shows that both institutions and students responded to the tuition-free messaging and eligibility criteria. Specifically, G3-eligible institutional program offerings and student enrollment in such programs both increased by roughly 30% within the first two years of program implementation. While Virginia's tuition-free policy promotes enrollment in targeted occupational programs, overall enrollment effects are partially offset by a 3% enrollment reduction in aid-ineligible transfer-oriented programs. To promote skill development and improve labor market outcomes, policymakers should ensure that programs eligible for tuition-free college include pathways to longer term credentials.

This report explores how has sports participation on teams for girls and women in the United States impacted participants' leadership outcomes in adulthood. It uses a unique, original, multi-cohort, and nationally representative survey of American women and gender-diverse adults (N=2,886) who played sports on teams for girls and women when they were 5-26, and who were between the ages of 20 and 80 in 2024. It connects together of what is known about leadership development through sports in an intersectionally gendered lens to better understand why sports are important in the lives of girls, women, and gender-diverse people, and how policy and practice can best promote a gender-equitable future in sports and beyond. This work extends the first 50 years of research from the Women's Sports Foundation, which consistently recognizes how participation in sports shapes the lives of girls and women for a lifetime. It explores how, across the American workforce and in communities around the country, the skills, traits, and experiences accrued in sports help girls become leaders later in their adult lives. With an eye toward leadership emergence as a developmental phenomenon, we attend to the changing circumstances of access to sports for girls and women over time, as it was dramatically impacted by the passage and implementation of Title IX. [This report was funded by Earlystone.]