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Four-day school week (4DSW) schedules are growing rapidly across the U.S., with school districts citing perceived benefits to teacher recruitment and retention and student attendance as motivations for adopting the schedule. This study uses panel data from Colorado, one of the states with the highest prevalence of 4DSWs, to investigate the impacts of the 4DSWs on the percentage of teachers with shortage credentials, teacher attrition rates, and student attendance rates. Utilizing a synthetic control difference-in-differences research design, we find 4DSWs have small negative or statistically insignificant effects on teacher recruitment and retention outcomes and find little variation in these effects by school rurality. Examining student attendance outcomes, we estimate a meaningfully small 0.76 percentage point reduction in attendance rates associated with adopting a 4DSW in non-rural schools (equivalent to 46% of these schools' typical yearly fluctuations in ADA) but do not detect an effect in small rural or non-rural schools. These findings suggest that these purported benefits of 4DSWs are not realized in Colorado, warranting concern about the continued use and expansion of this schedule given prior evidence of its negative average impacts on student achievement.

As women increasingly entered the labor force throughout the late 20th century, the challenges of balancing work and family came to the forefront. We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children--through duration expansions to the kindergarten day--to better understand mothers' and families' constraints. We first show that mothers of children in full-day kindergarten spend significantly more time at work, less time with their children, less time performing household duties, and less time commuting with their children in the middle of the day relative to mothers with half-day kindergarteners. Exploiting full-day kindergarten variation across place and time from 1992 through 2022, combined with the narrow age targeting of kindergarten, we document the impact of full-day kindergarten access on parental labor supply, family childcare costs, and children's subsequent academic outcomes. Our estimates of the maternal employment effects imply that full-day kindergarten expansions were responsible for as much as 24 percent of the growth in employment of mothers with kindergarten-aged children in this time frame.

In 2021, California committed to providing universal prekindergarten (UPK) for all 4-year-olds and expanding access for income-eligible 3-year-olds by 2025-2026. California UPK includes several early learning programs, including transitional kindergarten (TK), the California State Preschool Program (CSPP), Head Start, and locally funded early learning programs. To support UPK expansion, California's legislature and administration established the Universal Prekindergarten Planning and Implementation Grant in 2021, which allocated $200 million to all local education agencies (LEAs) serving kindergarteners, which include school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education. The California Department of Education surveyed all grant recipients in August 2023 about their UPK programs. This report provides an update on UPK implementation across the state through an analysis of survey responses from 1,384 LEAs, which represent almost all (95%) public school districts and two thirds (65%) of charter schools that serve elementary grades. Findings provide insights into LEAs' progress in UPK implementation related to service delivery models, facilities and transportation, instruction and assessment, strategies to support student needs, workforce development, implementation challenges, and technical assistance needs. In addition to statewide insights, the survey revealed promising practices and wide access with UPK expansion in California's four largest districts during their first year of implementation. The findings in this report may help policymakers and practitioners identify areas for additional investments and supports.

In this paper we examine academic recovery in 12 mid- to large-sized school districts across 10 states during the 2021-22 school year. Our findings highlight the challenges that recovery efforts faced during the 2021-22 school year. Although, on average, math and reading test score gains during the school year reached the pace of pre-pandemic school years, they were not accelerated beyond that pace. This is not surprising given that we found that districts struggled to implement recovery programs at the scale they had planned. In the districts where we had detailed data on student participation in academic interventions, we found that recovery efforts often fell short of original expectations for program scale, intensity of treatment, and impact. Interviews with a subsample of district leaders revealed several implementation challenges, including difficulty engaging targeted students consistently across schools, issues with staffing and limitations to staff capacity, challenges with scheduling, and limited engagement of parents as partners in recovery initiatives. Our findings on the pace and trajectory of recovery and the challenges of implementing recovery initiatives raise important questions about the scale of district recovery efforts. [The working paper received additional funding from Kenneth C. Griffin and AIR Equity Initiative.]

The four-day school week is a school calendar that has become increasingly common following the COVID-19 pandemic. Proponents of the calendar often claim that offering teachers a regular 3-day weekend will help schools better retain existing teachers and recruit new teachers to their district without incurring additional costs due to higher salaries or other pecuniary benefits. However, there is scant empirical evidence assessing these claims. I use difference-in-differences and synthetic difference-in-differences models to assess the impact of four-day school week calendars on teacher retention and teacher quality in Arkansas. I find evidence that the calendar may help retain teachers who otherwise would have moved to another school and suggestive evidence that retention in non-adopting schools may be harmed by the four-day school week adoption in nearby districts. Results examining changes in teacher quality are inconclusive. These results have significant implications given the rapid growth in four-day school week calendars in recent years.

A later school start time policy has been recommended as a solution to adolescents' sleep deprivation. We estimated the impacts of later school start times on adolescents' sleep and substance use by leveraging a quasi-experiment in which school start time was delayed in some regions in South Korea. A later school start time policy was implemented in 2014 and 2015, which delayed school start times approximately 30-90 minutes. We applied difference-in-differences and event-study designs to longitudinal data on a nationally-representative cohort of adolescents from 2010 to 2015, which annually tracked sleep and substance use of 1,133 adolescents from grade 7 through grade 12. The adoption of a later school start time policy was initially associated with a 19-minute increase in sleep duration (95% CI, 5.52 to 32.04), driven by a delayed wake time and consistent bedtime. The policy was also associated with statistically significant reductions in monthly smoking and drinking frequencies. However, approximately a year after implementation, the observed increase in sleep duration shrank to 7-minute (95% CI, -12.60 to 25.86) and became statistically nonsignificant. Similarly, the observed reduction in smoking and drinking was attenuated a year after. Our findings suggest that policies that increase sleep in adolescents may have positive effects on health behaviors, but additional efforts may be required to sustain positive impacts over time. Physicians and education and health policymakers should consider the long-term effects of later school start times on adolescent health and well-being.

CCRC recently conducted two major studies to shed light on the feasibility of implementing guided pathways reforms at scale and on the association between implementation and improvements in student outcomes. The first is an evaluation of the AACC Pathways Project, which involved 30 colleges from around the country that were committed to making guided pathways reforms, and the second is an evaluation of guided pathways implementation in three states--Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington State--that launched initiatives to assist colleges across their systems--70 institutions in total--to adopt reforms. This brief summarizes the results of these studies. One of the main findings is that whole-college reform is feasible but takes time--at least five years--to carry out. The authors also find that there is a positive relationship between the scaled implementation of complementary sets of guided pathways practices and some measures of early student momentum in AACC Pathways colleges that made the most progress in implementing guided pathways reforms and in one state (Tennessee) that got an early start on reforms and made good progress; in places that made less progress, the association is weak or not evident. A third major finding is that while students from all backgrounds may benefit from guided pathways reforms, these reforms are not sufficient to close equity gaps between racial and ethnic groups. The authors conclude with five recommendations for community colleges undertaking guided pathways reforms: (1) Offer ongoing case-managed advising by field, predictable schedules, and other supports to help students complete their plans; (2) Remove the obstacle to student success created by prerequisite remediation, particularly in math, and integrate support for students to master college-level courses in their field of study; (3) Take steps to strengthen teaching and learning in program gateway courses, not just math and English composition; (4) Extend tailored guided pathways supports for students from underserved groups; and (5) Build on-ramps to career-path college degree programs for underserved K-12 students after high school.

The Innovation Schools Act of 2008, § 22-32.5-102, et seq. C.R.S., was designed to provide a pathway for schools and districts to develop and implement innovative practices in a wide variety of areas and contexts to improve student outcomes. The Act provides a formal process that allows schools or groups of schools to make requests to their local school boards for waivers from district-level policies and for school boards to make requests to the Colorado State Board of Education for waivers from state-level laws and regulations. The Act enables schools to better provide educational services tailored to meet the needs of their student populations. Innovation schools are required to articulate a vision around the autonomies they are seeking, as well as to gain support from a variety of stakeholders, including teachers, administrators, and School Accountability Committee members, before receiving the innovation school designation. The innovation application process (see Appendix A) requires schools to think through the common goal and vision that will be made possible by receiving greater autonomy, as well as to identify the policies and documents that will need to change when these innovations are implemented. In compliance with the requirements of § 22-32.5-111, C.R.S., the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) has prepared this annual report divided into the following parts: (1) Overview of the Innovation Schools Act; (2) Current Demographics of Innovation Schools; (3) Description of the Innovations Implemented; (4) Summary of the Academic Performance of Innovation Schools; and (5) Recommendations for Legislative Changes. This report builds on the format from previous years, which typically includes a more detailed section regarding the academic performance of innovation schools and innovation school zones. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, state assessments in 2020 were suspended and the corresponding data is not available. For the 2020-21 school year, state assessments were administered to a limited number of grade levels. In the 2021-22 school year, state assessments were administered, and the corresponding data is included in this report. Similar to overall statewide trends, rates of participation in state assessments in 21-22 were still lower than in 2019 and should be considered when reviewing summary statistics.

The Data Must Speak (DMS) Positive Deviance research aims to improve the equity and quality of education through the use of data by studying the practices and behaviours of 'positive deviant' schools -- schools that outperform others despite operating in similar contexts and with equivalent resources. The analysis aims to inform practical recommendations on how to scale these practices and behaviours to lower-performing schools. This report presents the results of the first stage of the DMS research in Maranhão state in Brazil, which analyses different factors related to educational performance. The main findings and areas for further exploration based on the analysis are presented in this report. [This report was co-published by the State Department of Education in Maranhão (SEDUC-MA) and UNICEF Brazil.]

In this paper, we examine the fundamental and complex role that time plays in the learning process. We begin by developing a conceptual framework to elucidate the multiple obstacles schools face in converting allocated time into learning time. We then synthesize the causal research and document a clear positive effect of time on student achievement of small to medium magnitude, but also with likely diminishing marginal returns. Further descriptive analyses reveal how large differences in the length of the school day and year across public schools are an underappreciated dimension of educational inequality in the United States. Finally, our case study of time loss in one urban district demonstrates the potential to substantially increase learning time within existing constraints.

Four-day school weeks are becoming increasingly common in the U.S., but their effect on achievement is not well-understood. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we conduct the most representative student-level analysis to date of the effects of four-day weeks on student achievement and within-year growth using NWEA MAP Growth data. We estimate significant negative effects of the schedule on spring reading achievement (-0.07 SD) and fall-to-spring gains in math (-0.05 SD) and reading (-0.06 SD). The negative effects of the schedule are larger in non-rural schools and for female students, and they may grow over time. Policymakers and practitioners will need to weigh the schedule's varied effects across contexts in their decisions regarding how and if to implement the policy.

In 2021, California committed to providing universal prekindergarten (UPK) for all 4-year-olds and income-eligible 3-year-olds by 2025-26. UPK includes several early learning programs, including transitional kindergarten (TK), the California State Preschool Program (CSPP), Head Start, and expanded learning opportunities to provide full-day early learning and care. TK is the only UPK program that is free and universally available as part of California's public education system. Offered by local education agencies (LEAs), TK currently serves all 4-year-olds who turn 5 between September 2 and December 2 and will expand to all 4-year-olds by 2025-26. The legislature also made new investments in CSPP, a program for income-eligible 3- and 4-year-old children. Funding for CSPP is provided by the state through grants to both LEAs and community-based organizations. This report provides a snapshot of 1,108 LEAs' initial plans for UPK expansion through the analysis of a survey administered by the California Department of Education in August 2022. Key findings provide insights into LEA plans for service delivery models, facilities and transportation, instruction and assessment, workforce development, school leader development, and technical assistance needs. Notably: (1) Universal prekindergarten delivery models; (2) Facilities and transportation; (3) Instruction and assessment; (4) Workforce development; (5) Supporting school leaders; (6) Technical assistance needs; and (7) Large district approaches to UPK. These findings may help policymakers and practitioners identify areas for additional investments and supports during UPK implementation, although the authors note several data limitations and caution that initial UPK plans may have shifted over the course of the 2022-23 school year. As California moves forward with the expansion of universal prekindergarten, more research and data collection will be needed.

To better support districts and preschool program providers, the Ohio Department of Education's Office of Early Learning and School Readiness is providing answers to the following frequently asked questions pertaining to Ohio Administrative Code 3301-51-11. This document is divided into sections aligning with each section of the rule. This document will continue to be updated based on additional questions and concerns from the field. Red text indicates revisions since previous version. [For the 2021 report, see ED619735.]

This paper documents the impact of home libraries on academic achievement, economic success, and health. It summarizes research that shows how children without access to reading materials at home are more likely to suffer learning losses when out of school and how home libraries are one of schools' and communities' best tools to combat learning loss. In sum, the paper illustrates the importance of creating a literacy-rich home environment for all children and outlines the essential components of a student home library--a tangible, cost-effective way to afford every child access to a bright, successful future. [This report was prepared by Scholastic Research & Validation.]

While the Pell Grant covers a substantial proportion of college tuition for low-income students, it has covered only two full-time semesters per year and has not included any support for summer courses through most of its history. As research has shown that continuous enrollment throughout the year increases college persistence and completion, the summer Pell (SP) program was added during the summer of 2009 and allowed eligible low-income students to receive an additional grant for summer tuition and eligible costs. The SP was eliminated in 2011 and then restored in 2017. Using administrative data on community college students in New York City, our difference-indifferences analysis results from both periods show that SP-eligible students had a higher retention rate in the fall of the second year, had higher associate and bachelor's degree attainment rates, and had higher earnings gains up to nine years from college entry compared to SP-ineligible students. Heterogeneous analysis indicates that the SP benefits were driven by Black students and older students.

Developing schedules is one of the most challenging undertakings that school and district leaders do every year. It's also one of the most important. School schedules often have significant inefficiencies that impact student experiences and outcomes, like course offerings that don't align with student needs; mismatches in resources across schools; or inconsistencies in class sizes. This has a disproportionate impact on students with higher needs. When approached strategically, schedules provide an immense opportunity to address critical priorities with district staffing, budgets, and academic goals. This case study reveals how Lubbock ISD partnered with Timely to use scheduling to make significant progress toward its SY23-24 priorities--even in the face of declining enrollment and the looming ESSER fiscal cliff. A new scheduling process allowed the district to: (1) improve middle school academic performance by investing in double blocks of ELA and math; (2) increase capacity to better serve students with disabilities by hiring more staff members across grades 6-12 and dedicate additional funding for professional development; and (3) efficiently allocate resources across all schools by scheduling more consistent class sizes and teacher loads in middle and high school. [This report was co-produced by Timely and Lubbock Independent School District (LISD).]

The Legislature established the Graduation: A Team Effort (GATE) Advisory (originally known as Building Bridges Workgroup) in 2007 to keep all students visible and on track to graduate from high school. The state's ongoing engagement and reengagement efforts are based on the three major recommendations of the original Building Bridges Workgroup: (1) Set an educational goal for youth and family-serving agencies and coordinate efforts to achieve it; (2) Build local dropout prevention and intervention systems and practices at every grade level; and (3) Create a dropout reengagement system for 16-24-year-old youth who are not likely to return to high school. The GATE Advisory Committee met regularly over the course of the 2022-23 school year to promote and expand effective dropout prevention, intervention, and reengagement policy and programming. As a result of these discussions, the Committee proposed the following recommendations to the legislature: (1) Develop a statewide early warning and intervention system; (2) Build capacity to create school schedules that are inclusive and driven by high expectations; (3) Increase capacity for the implementation of Ninth Grade Success Teams; (4) Support youth reengagement efforts through the establishment of barrier reduction funding for Open Doors Youth Reengagement programs; and (5) Expand resources to support school/community dropout prevention, intervention, and reengagement system support.

The 2020-21 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) is a nationally representative survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. State-level data are also available for public schools, principals, and teachers. NTPS collects data on core topics including teacher and principal preparation, classes taught, school characteristics, and demographics of the teacher and principal labor forces. The survey is developed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education, and data are collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. This report presents basic estimates from the Public and Private School Data Files of the 2020-21 NTPS, the third collection of NTPS. The purpose of NTPS is to collect data to provide a detailed picture of U.S. elementary and secondary schools and their staff. Items about how schools first adapted to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic during the spring of 2020 were included in the School, Principal, and Teacher Questionnaires. In addition, an item was included at the beginning of each questionnaire asking about the current effect of COVID-19 on instruction at the school at the time the survey was completed during the 2020-21 school year. This Summary presents selected findings from the First Look report. [For the Full Report, see ED624616.]

The 2020-21 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) is a nationally representative survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. State-level data are also available for public schools, principals, and teachers. NTPS collects data on core topics including teacher and principal preparation, classes taught, school characteristics, and demographics of the teacher and principal labor forces. The survey is developed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education, and data are collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. This report presents basic estimates from the Public and Private School Data Files of the 2020-21 NTPS, the third collection of NTPS. The purpose of NTPS is to collect data to provide a detailed picture of U.S. elementary and secondary schools and their staff. Items about how schools first adapted to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic during the spring of 2020 were included in the School, Principal, and Teacher Questionnaires. In addition, an item was included at the beginning of each questionnaire asking about the current effect of COVID-19 on instruction at the school at the time the survey was completed during the 2020-21 school year. This First Look report provides descriptive statistics and basic information from the 2020-21 National Teacher and Principal Survey Public School and Private School Data files. [For the Summary report, see ED624615.]

Summer programming is one of the main ways school districts have sought to help students recover academically from COVID-19 pandemic-related setbacks. Authors use a survey administered to a nationally representative sample of kindergarten through grade 12 public school districts to investigate the prevalence and structure of districts' programming in summer 2023. Authors use these results to describe the prevalence of district-offered summer programming in 2023; examine details about elementary and secondary programs, in terms of their eligibility criteria, length, and academic and nonacademic offerings; discuss how districts approached their summer academic instruction; and look at districts' expectations about funding for summer 2024. Because experiences with summer learning programming can vary by district context, the authors examine differences in districts' survey responses by locale (urban, suburban, rural), poverty status (low poverty, high poverty), student racial/ethnic composition (majority white students, majority students of color), and enrollment size (small, medium, large). This research is part of a series intended to provide brief analyses of educator survey results of immediate interest to policymakers, practitioners, and researchers.

Transnational joint education provision -- education jointly developed and delivered by two or more institutions in different countries -- has emerged as a desired experience for many students, a key priority of several institutions, and a site of innovation. The strategic importance of this topic on a European level is one of the reasons it was selected for the 2023 EUA Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Group entitled "Challenges and enablers in designing transnational joint education provision". The group's findings are compiled in this report, which outlines the group's conceptual understanding of the term, benefits and challenges of engaging in transnational joint education provision, and recommendations geared towards higher education leadership, staff members, as well as national and regional-level governments.

In compliance with the Indian Education Act (NMSA1976 Section 22), the purpose of this Tribal Education Status Report (TESR) is to inform stakeholders of the New Mexico Public Education Department's (NMPED) and Local Education Agency's (LEAs) current initiatives specific to American Indian (AI) students and their educational progress. This report examines both the current conditions and recent trends in the education of New Mexico's American Indian students and provides action steps to strengthen existing programs or propose new activities to yield a positive outcome for American Indian students. Of the 89 public school districts, 57 state charter schools, and 48 local charter schools in New Mexico, 23 public school districts and 10 charter schools (five state and five local) are located on or near tribal land and required to complete an annual TESR. Twenty-two districts and four charters submitted a TESR that supports the following sections: school safety, parent and community involvement, education programs (focusing on tribal students and incorporating Indigenous research, evaluation, and curricula), and access to native languages, the data collected include attendance, dropout rates, and graduation rates. The NMPED is committed to providing guidance and support to Tribes and school districts to foster partnerships, to reach the growth outcomes, and set out for AI students within the New Mexico's Every Student Succeeds Act Plan. [For the 2020-2021 report, see ED619539.]

Policymakers have renewed calls for expanding instructional time in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. We establish a set of empirical facts about time in school, synthesize the literature on the causal effects of instructional time, and conduct a case study of time use in an urban district. On average, instructional time in U.S. public schools is comparable to most high-income countries, with longer days but shorter years. However, instructional time varies widely across U.S. public schools with a 90th-10th percentile difference of 190 total hours. Empirical literature confirms that additional time can increase student achievement, but how this time is structured matters. Our case study suggests schools might also recover substantial lost learning time within the existing school day. [The Providence Public School District provided support for this study.]