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The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) annual survey of tuition and fees collects the resident and nonresident tuition and fees at public two- and four-year institutions in the WICHE region for undergraduate and graduate students. WICHE administered the most recent survey to state higher education executive offices, system offices, and institutions in each of the WICHE states, territories, and freely associated states in Summer 2023. Complete data from the survey are available on WICHE's online dashboard and enable comparisons of rates over time, across states, territories, and freely associated states, and between Carnegie Classifications. Unless otherwise indicated, tuition and fees rates are in current U.S. dollars, and average rates at the state and regional levels are weighted by full-time equivalent (FTE) enrollment. This WICHE Insights summarizes recent tuition and fees for undergraduates at public institutions in the West.

This report examines state portraits of a graduate and how state strategies for development and implementation can support future readiness. It also provides recommendations for state education agencies to consider to lift up the importance and visibility of these portraits. Several states have begun the process of developing a "portrait" or "profile of a graduate," which is a holistic look at the skills and competencies students need to master to thrive in work, postsecondary educational opportunities, community, and their personal lives. To better understand how states are utilizing the portrait of a graduate to prepare students for career and college, we conducted a scan of all 50 states to see which states had developed state-wide portraits of a graduate or visions of a high school graduate. The results inform the findings and recommendations of this report, including the skills states are highlighting as essential for students' future success and how states are making this vision actionable in service of cultivating future-ready graduates. As this review indicates, states are keenly aware that today's students will be called on to meet the growing challenges of the 21st century, as among the top skills are critical thinking and problem- solving, social awareness skills, and being an active citizen. Moreover, states deeply understand it is necessary to develop students' social and emotional skills and competencies. This report delves deeper into how states are implementing their portrait of a graduate to help students meet these expectations.

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 2023, charter school advocates continued to make legislative gains in statehouses across the country. These gains were made in red, blue, and purple states, oftentimes in ways that showed bipartisan support for charter schools remains firmly in place. In looking at the results of this year's legislative sessions across the country, four developments in particular stand out. First, in perhaps the biggest win this year, Montana became the 46th state to enact a charter school law. Second, charter school advocates notched an unusually large number of major wins on funding and facilities legislation, with especially significant progress in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Wyoming. Third, charter school supporters opened the door to new types of authorizers in several states, including in Montana (new state authorizer), Nevada (cities and counties), North Carolina (new state authorizer), Oklahoma (new state authorizer, more types of universities, and accredited private institutions of higher learning), Utah (private institutions of higher education), and Wyoming (new state authorizer). Fourth, charter school supporters successfully played successful defense on anti-charter school efforts in several states, with three of the most notable defensive victories in blue states. In New Mexico, the Senate Education Committee voted down a charter school moratorium bill that was proposed by the Senate President Pro Tempore by a 7-1 margin. The bill would not have allowed any more charter schools in school districts where 20% of the students already attend a charter school. In California, Governor Newsom vetoed a bill that would have made harmful changes to the Charter School Facility Grant program and unnecessarily raise facilities cost for charter schools that want to establish or expand in low-income communities across the state. In Michigan, the legislature reversed a 20% cut to the funding of virtual charter schools proposed by the governor and instead level funded these schools. This report provides highlights from this year's state legislative activity across the country, organized into the following categories: funding and facilities, authorizing and accountability, other issues, no law states, and harmful legislation.

Students do better and stay longer in school when families are engaged, according to research. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to study parent and family engagement in Title I schools. This report examines: (1) the extent to which Title I schools made required parent and family engagement information available on their websites; (2) how parent and family engagement compares between Title I and non-Title I schools; and (3) the extent to which Education's guidance addresses Title I requirements for parent and family engagement. GAO reviewed school and district websites for a nationally generalizable sample of Title I schools, analyzed Education's most recent data on parents' views of family engagement (school year 2018-2019), and reviewed relevant federal laws and documents on Title I oversight. GAO interviewed Education officials and state and local officials from Nebraska, Nevada, and Tennessee and selected schools and districts in these states for a mix of Title I program type, school type, and locale. Recommendations include that Education update its guidance on Title I parent and family engagement to reflect requirements under current law.

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

RAND researchers conducted a study that aimed to fill the information gap on how to successfully implement a statewide financial education mandate by studying the implementation of Nevada's 2017 financial literacy education reform. The study focused on the reform enacted by the Nevada Legislature in 2017, Senate Bill 249, which required that financial literacy education be implemented in third through 12th grade starting in the 2017-2018 school year. RAND researchers examined the following research questions to better understand Nevada's financial literacy reform and potential implications for strengthening financial literacy reforms more broadly: (1) After the 2017 Nevada mandate, how was financial literacy education implemented in schools?; (2) What were the main barriers and facilitators to financial literacy implementation across Nevada's schools?; and (3) How do educators, leaders, and policymakers perceive financial literacy education in Nevada?

More than half of U.S. states have enacted policies to expand financial literacy education in schools with kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) with the goal of improving students' financial literacy skills. Although financial literacy education can be key to building long-term financial capabilities and well-being, more information is needed on how to effectively design state-level financial literacy education requirements. In this report, we examine the implementation of Nevada's financial literacy requirements in grades 3 through 12 using data from a teacher survey, focus groups, interviews, and financial literacy programs. We describe several key takeaways from the implementation process and recommendations for strengthening financial literacy education in K-12 schools. This report should be of interest to state policymakers, education leaders, teachers, and those working to advance youth financial literacy.

The Charter Schools Program (CSP) is the nation's only source of dedicated federal funding to support the creation, expansion, and replication of public charter schools. Since FY2019, the CSP has been flat funded at $440 million. The CSP amounts to less than 1% of federal spending on K-12 education, however, it has a substantial impact on the communities where charter schools operate. Our 2023 CSP annual report breaks down how the program works and ways school leaders are using the funds. [For the 2022 report, see ED625565.]

The most recent data on tuition, appropriations, and state grant aid present an economic outlook that appears favorable in the West. Tuition rates remained relatively flat for the past decade, total state funding to higher education increased across the region in the past year, and state grant aid continued to increase since 2010-11. Despite these promising trends, higher education institutions and systems face considerable challenges such as declining enrollment, concerns about the value of a degree, rising costs for students and institutions, and a need to address critical workforce gaps. With potential for an economic slowdown in the near future, higher education leaders and policymakers must strategically align fiscal policy levers to address state priorities and concerns on the affordability and value of a postsecondary degree. This WICHE Insights looks at the trends and implications for tuition and fees, appropriations, and financial aid in the west for 2022-23. [For the 2021-22 report, see ED622567.]

Innovation in education is vital for responding to emerging challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and for building progress on longstanding challenges in schools. The infusion of substantial, highly flexible pots of federal relief dollars created an opportunity to pilot new programs and initiatives. Many states and districts opted to invest resources in traditional K-12 expenses, such as increasing staff capacity or updating facilities. However, states are also using the funds to spark new initiatives that otherwise may not have been possible and can be replicated across the country. This Policy Guide presents six strategies along with state examples to assist in planning, designing, implementing, and sustaining innovative services and programs. In addition to these strategies, other researchers have developed models for change that put forward other unique approaches, such as allowing for locally driven variation, providing human capital support for ongoing technical assistance and tolerating small-scale risk. The end goal of using these approaches is to design innovative policies that endure and improve long-term student outcomes.

More than 427,000 undocumented students are enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions. That's an impressive number, considering the many hurdles they must overcome on the road to college and a degree, including restrictions on their ability to enroll in higher education institutions; limits on access to in-state tuition, state financial aid, professional and commercial licenses, driver's licenses, state health care, and food and housing assistance; and difficulties obtaining work authorization and employment -- not to mention the threat of deportation they are under. Providing equitable higher education access for undocumented students means making college accessible and affordable for them. But it also means acknowledging the unique challenges they face because of their immigration status and ensuring that they get the additional supports they need. Researchers from The Education Trust analyzed 9 criteria in the 15 states with the largest shares of undocumented college students -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington -- to determine whether state policies are helping or hurting undocumented students' ability to attend college and how access and success for this underserved student population could be improved. [This report was supported by the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, FWD.us, and United We Dream.]

State education finance sets the stage for what is possible in schools. Too many state education finance systems today are inequitable, outdated, and inadequate, and there are often significant political barriers to change. Advocates for educational equity can and should play an essential role in shaping the allocation and structure of state funding for pre-K through grade 12 public schools. For this report, the authors interviewed advocacy leaders in six states -- California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, and Nevada -- to learn more about the conditions that enabled and influenced big changes in their education finance systems. Leaders reflected on their policy wins and losses and offered advice to other advocates interested in pushing for funding reform. These conversations revealed five common conditions that emerged in different ways across states and paved the way for state policy changes. In order of frequency, they were: (1) Coalitions; (2) Champions; (3) Research; (4) Economics; and (5) Lawsuits. This playbook is about the contexts and conditions that facilitated those changes.

This resource from the Region 15 Comprehensive Center provides an overview of the process that the Nevada Department of Education used to refine the review process for the adoption of high-quality instructional materials. This refined process gives all districts, regardless of size or type, a choice of instructional materials that are standards-aligned, culturally engaging. Some of the challenges NDE faced with the previous process included a lack of clarity and transparency in the adoption process, content-area review rubrics varied in scope and complexity, content-area review participants' knowledge and understanding of the standards varied within and across content areas causing confusion and disagreement in the review process, and small and rural districts faced additional obstacles to participating in the instructional materials review and adoption process. Rural districts have limited staff capacity to calibrate rubrics and align with the rest of the state, and rural teachers felt their voices were overshadowed by larger districts.

The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on preschool children's school readiness skills remains understudied. This research investigates Head Start preschool children's early numeracy, literacy, and executive function outcomes during a pandemic-affected school year, using a novel virtual assessment methodology. Study children (N = 336; mean age = 51 months; 46% Hispanic; 36% Black Non-Hispanic; 52% female) in a network of Head Start centers in four states (Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) experienced low in-person preschool exposure compared to national pre-pandemic norms. However, study children experienced fall to spring score gains during the pandemic-affected year of 0.05 SD in executive function, 0.27 SD in print knowledge, and 0.45-0.71 SD in early numeracy skills, growth not outside the general range of that observed in pre-pandemic research studies. For two of the three early numeracy domains measured, spring test score outcomes were stronger among children who attended more in-person preschool. We discuss implications for future research and policy.

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.]

Finding funds to build and renovate facilities is a major hurdle for public charter schools because most state laws do not provide charter schools with the full amount of state and local funding that other public schools receive. Although an increasing number of states are passing laws to address charter school facility funding gaps, inequities persist in every state. To help close these funding gaps, thirteen states and the District of Columbia (D.C.) have statutorily enacted a charter school loan program. Of these, ten are funded and remain active--California, D.C., Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah. Four states--Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, and Rhode Island--have authorized a charter school loan program but do not currently provide funding. For this snapshot, the authors conducted a comprehensive review of state statutes and regulations to create a summary of loan programs, including such matters as funding levels, interest rates, repayment terms, and allowable uses. State officials from state departments of education, treasury departments, finance authorities, and state charter school organizations also verified the accuracy of this information. This is the fourth report in a series of State Policy Snapshots that provides the charter school community and policy makers with a more complete picture of the various types of loan funds designed to help charter schools achieve more favorable financing conditions for their facility acquisitions.

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

In spring 2022, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology (OET) committed to advancing digital equity through the Digital Equity Education Roundtables (DEER) Initiative. Through DEER, OET hosted a series of national conversations with leaders from community-based organizations, as well as families and learners furthest from digital opportunities. The "Advancing Digital Equity All" resource illuminates insights from these conversation to highlight the barriers faced by learner communities and promising solutions for increasing access to technology for learning. The historic federal investments authorized by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act offer critical opportunities for broadband planning that can identify and equitably address the various availability, affordability, and adoption challenges described. Using this guidance resource as a starting point, it is essential that leaders collaborate with those most impacted by the digital divide to develop comprehensive digital equity plans that outline strategies to meet the needs of learners, their families/caregivers, and communities effectively and sustainably.

Personalized, competency-based learning efforts often take place in a single classroom or school, but not systematically across districts, let alone states. To address this dynamic and increase the scale of personalized, competency-based learning, KnowledgeWorks, an independent nonprofit organization that partners with education stakeholders to advance personalized competency-based learning efforts, has engaged in state level implementation support of personalized, competency-based learning in a number of states, including Arizona, Nevada, North Dakota, and South Carolina. The purpose of this report is to serve as a resource for the states and districts already involved in personalized, competency-based learning, provide considerations for other states adopting personalized, competency-based learning, and offer lessons learned for the wider field. The research team and KnowledgeWorks established three goals for the study at the outset: (1) Document approaches and lessons learned from policy adoption and implementation of personalized, competency-based learning policies in four states; (2) Identify how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the move towards personalized, competency-based learning in each state; and (3) Identify how each state defines and operationalizes its equity commitment within the state's personalized, competency-based learning efforts.

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.

In response to research raising concerns about developmental placement, new placement systems and curricular models designed to increase the number of students placed into entry-level college courses have emerged in recent years. These systems aim to more accurately identify students who may benefit from some type of developmental instruction and those who are ready for entry-level college courses. This brief presents the findings of CAPR's exploratory study of informed self-placement (ISP), a placement system in which colleges provide information about placement policies, available courses, and other relevant topics to engage students as active participants in their own placement. ISP, which is also called guided self-placement or directed self-placement, is of interest because it does not rely solely, if at all, on standardized test scores, which research shows are not reliable predictors of performance in college. Moreover, many colleges adopted ISP during the COVID-19 pandemic, when this study began, because they experienced difficulty administering standardized tests and were seeking placement methods that could be easily used in a virtual setting. The study examined course enrollment and completion trends among students placed using ISP practices and sought to document varied approaches to ISP. The researchers collected demographic and outcome data on students' math and English course enrollments and completions over the last five academic years at three Nevada colleges offering associate and bachelor's degrees. They also interviewed assessment and placement scholars and representatives of higher education systems and institutions currently implementing some form of ISP. This brief provides a taxonomy of various placement systems, shares descriptive data on course enrollment and completion, and identifies important equity and access considerations for states and institutions interested in implementing ISP. Although more research is needed to understand the causal impacts of ISP on student outcomes, the data suggest that ISP has the potential to improve students' access to college-level coursework.

The proliferation of settings in which personalized learning platforms have been used during the pandemic offers rich opportunities for describing those use cases and understanding how such platforms might affect students' academic, social, and emotional outcomes. There is relatively little known about which use cases provide the best outcomes for students. In this report, the authors discuss one example of how personalized learning platforms were used in the first year of implementation in an innovative learning environment: the Southern Nevada Urban Micro Academy (SNUMA). The SNUMA use case interested the researchers because leaders set ambitious goals for students whose learning was assessed as being below grade level. These goals encouraged extensive use of personalized learning platforms--usage that, to the best of the authors' knowledge, exceeded developer recommendations. The platform metrics examined suggest that most students made substantial progress and were assessed as performing at grade level by the end of the school year. However, these results also raise many questions. It is unknown, for example, if these gains will be validated by standardized assessments or if they were achieved at the expense of students' social and emotional well-being.

This briefing paper explores Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) policies and practices that state early intervention (Part C) programs may consider implementing to meet the social-emotional and mental health needs of infants and toddlers in the context of relationships with their parents and other caregivers.

This edition of "WICHE Insights" discusses the most recent results of WICHE's annual survey, "Tuition and Fees in the West," as well as the recent trends in state appropriations and state financial aid. Overall, the most recent data highlights a positive trend in state higher education finance as most states reported minimal tuition rate changes along with increases in state appropriations and financial aid over the past academic and fiscal years. Although most states are facing a positive fiscal outlook for the upcoming fiscal year, higher education institutions and systems are facing rising costs and declining enrollments, presenting challenges in addressing affordability. Key takeaways from the brief include: (1) Regional average tuition and fees for resident undergraduates at public four-year institutions were $10,028 in AY 2021-22, an increase of 1.2% from AY 2020-21; (2) Regional average in-district tuition and fees at public two-year institutions increased 3.4% from AY 2020-21 to $4,217 in AY 2021-22; (3) State appropriations in the West reached an all-time high in FY 2022, with over $32 billion in state support going to higher education in the current fiscal year. In addition to state dollars, states used about $924 million in COVID-19 relief funds for higher education in FY 2022; and (4) State financial aid per undergraduate increased between AY 2018-19 and AY 2019-20 and was at about the same amount as the national average, although state grant aid continues to be more likely based on need in the West compared to the national average.

In collaboration with the Arts Education Partnership, Education Commission of the States is turning its attention to STEAM education (adding the "A" for arts), which can promote a more comprehensive approach and provide state policymakers with more policy levers. Several states have already begun implementing STEAM education and are making progress. Yet more can be done to capitalize on the early years to build strong foundational skills. To explore the positive impacts of STEAM education for young learners in pre-K through fifth grade, this Policy Brief highlights four trends from arts integration and STEAM research over the past 20 years. It includes examples, along with implications for each trend, and closes with considerations for state policymakers.

To best train and support school leaders in their evolving roles, they require high-quality preparation and in-service pipelines that both address the changing demands on their positions and acknowledge the cascading effects that well-prepared leaders have on both student outcomes and in school culture and retention. Including school leaders in the policymaking process will help guide state leaders on the most effective approaches for their states and needs. To that end, this Policy Brief explores school leader representation on state and local boards of education and on statewide task forces and commissions. The brief also presents an overview of the school leadership pipeline and examples of recent legislative action in 13 states that supports development along the continuum.

WestEd has made substantial progress on the evidence of promise study for Clark County School District's (CCSD) 2017 Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) grant. WestEd collected the necessary student-level test score, course credit, and demographic data from CCSD for the study to identify statistically significant or substantively important effects of the MSAP-funded schools on student outcomes. For this report (which is the third interim evaluation summary report), WestEd added additional findings using the same Measures of Academic Progress [MAP] assessments from 2019-20 to the second interim report based on a randomized controlled trial (RCT) that relied on the lottery of one school in the study that was substantially oversubscribed. The findings from the RCT, which is a more rigorous design than the quasi-experimental designs (QEDs), replicated the positive and statistically significant impact on a large group of 6th graders' mathematics achievement found by the QED. Prior to developing the final summary report for the evidence of promise study, WestEd will explore ways to rigorously evaluate the impact of the MSAP-funded magnet schools on reducing, eliminating, or preventing minority group isolation that could meet WWC Design Standards.

This report outlines key data elements related to the Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE), Western Regional Graduate Program (WRGP), and Professional Student Exchange Program (PSEP) for the 2021-22 academic year and is a core resource for policymakers, institutional leaders, counselors and other stakeholders across the region. This report contains participation and migration statistics for each program, shared in aggregate and by each Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) state and territory. There are also summaries that provide reference points for multiple stakeholders -- students and their families, high school counselors and campus advisors, institutional leaders, and policymakers. [For the 2020-21 report, see ED622665.]

The purpose of this brief is to introduce a developmental framework for states working to systematically integrate evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) with career and workforce development efforts. Career and workforce development is a well-known, nonpartisan strategy for preparing students for postsecondary success in schools. According to the Coalition for Career Development Center (CCD), career development is "a process that informs individuals about career opportunities, helps them identify their talent, become aware of how their talent transfers into a wide range of occupational opportunities and enables them to make effective decisions on the academic and postsecondary pathways that will enable them to pursue their career and life goals" (CCD, 2021). Adopting this definition, Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) uses the term "career and workforce development" to capture the diversity of approaches and efforts employed by states to describe this process and the efforts that support it. CASEL, the Coalition for Career Development Center, and CIVIC created this developmental framework in collaboration with eight states (Delaware, Kansas, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, Wisconsin) participating in the CASEL Collaborating States Initiative (CSI) SEL and Career and Workforce Development Community of Practice (CoP). This community of practice supports states advancing the integration of SEL with career and workforce development and fosters relationships in which lessons can be shared, common challenges can be discussed, and innovative ideas can be discovered. Specific strategies for the integration of SEL and career and workforce development efforts are being co-constructed through our partnership with states. [This report was prepared with the Coalition for Career Development Center (CCD) and CASEL's Collaborating States Initiative (CSI) partners.]