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The purpose of this study was to study the impact on student performance due to participation in the Catapult Learning Intervention program in the Mathematics and Reading services offered in a religious non-public school system in the Northeastern United States from grades 6-8. Student scaled scores from the NWEA MAP assessments administered at the beginning of the school year in Fall 2023 (pre-test) and at the end of the school year in Spring 2024 (post-test) were used in the comparative analysis. Analysis of Co-Variance (ANCOVA) was used to explore the difference in the adjusted mean scores of Catapult Learning (CL) enrolled students and students who did not participate in the CL intervention programs, after controlling for the initial score of the students. The effect sizes were also calculated to determine the level of impact of the program services on student outcomes. Additionally, the differences in student outcomes based on the duration of participation in the Catapult Learning intervention programs were examined. Results showed that students who scored at the 60th percentile or below on their pretests and participated in the CL intervention program had higher average scaled (RIT) scores in Math posttest than students who did not participate, when controlling for their pretest achievement. Students from the 6-8 grade level participating in the program who scored 60th percentile or below on their pretests and who met the recommended attendance thresholds, also had higher average Spring (post-test) test overall scaled (RIT) scores than students who did not participate in the intervention program in both Math and Reading, when controlling for the student pretest achievement. These results highlight the role of Catapult Learning's intervention programs on the outcomes of students in the Math and Reading standardized assessments. The study also provides direction on the relationship between student attendance and achievement.

The purpose of this study was to study the impact on student performance due to participation in the Catapult Learning Intervention program in the Mathematics services offered in a religious non-public school system in the Northeastern United States from grades K-2. Student scaled scores from the NWEA MAP assessments administered at the beginning of the school year in Fall 2023 (pre-test) and at the end of the school year in Spring 2024 (post-test) were used in the comparative analysis. Analysis of Co-Variance (ANCOVA) was used to explore the difference in the adjusted mean scores of Catapult Learning (CL) enrolled students and students who did not participate in the CL intervention programs, after controlling for the initial score of the students. Effect sizes were also calculated to determine the level of impact of the program services on student outcomes. Additionally, the differences in student outcomes based on the duration of participation in the Catapult Learning intervention programs were examined. Results showed that students who scored at the 60th percentile or below on their pretests and participated in the CL intervention program had higher average scaled (RIT) scores in Math posttest than students who did not participate, when pretest achievement was controlled. Students from the K-2 grade level participating in the program who scored 60th percentile or below on their pretests and who met the recommended attendance thresholds, also had higher average Spring (post-test) test overall scaled (RIT) scores than students who did not participate in the intervention program in Math, when controlling for the student pretest achievement. These results highlight the role of Catapult Learning's intervention programs on the outcomes of students in the standardized assessments. The study also provides direction on the relationship between student attendance and achievement.

The 11th edition of "Knocking at the College Door" comes at a critical time for the country. Many sectors of the economy face workforce shortages, while higher education faces increasing skepticism about its value. The data and analyses within these pages will likely fuel further concerns for those across higher education as the nation witnesses the arrival of a moment that has long been predicted: the peak and subsequent decline in the number of high school graduates. Adding to the uncertainty are the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to fluctuations in K-12 enrollments and to the phenomenon of learning loss across all levels of education. This edition of "Knocking" also focuses on COVID-19's impact on the nation's education pipeline. The data suggest that a sizable number of K-12 students may have left education altogether, while the students who remain in the educational systems face learning deficits. Six key findings emerged from this edition: (1) the total number of high school graduates is expected to peak in 2025 and then decline steadily through 2041; (2) the proportion of future graduating classes that come from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds -- particularly Hispanic and Multiracial graduates -- will continue to increase; (3) compared to 2023, 38 states are projected to see a decline in the number of graduates by 2041, as most regions in the U.S. continue to shrink; and (4) COVID-19's impact on the education pipeline will be felt for years to come. The information in this report can be used by policymakers, education decisionmakers, researchers, and others for a range of important uses. Released every four years, "Knocking at the College Door" has provided trusted and reliable data at the state, regional, and national levels for more than four decades.

Research shows that teachers of color can benefit all students, particularly students of color, yet only one in five teachers are individuals of color, compared to more than half of K-12 public school students. Increasing the diversity of educators can not only benefit students, but recruiting, preparing, and retaining more teachers of color who are underrepresented in the current teacher workforce can also help to address educator shortages. These are two critical goals many States, districts, and schools across the country are working to address. This non-regulatory guidance highlights actions that State educational agencies (SEAs), local educational agencies (LEAs, hereafter districts), and institutions of higher education (IHEs) can take to increase educator diversity, as well as Federal funding opportunities available to support these actions. This guidance outlines how financial supports and incentives; strategic investments; positive and supportive learning and teaching conditions for candidates enrolled in educator preparation programs (EPPs) and in-service educators; and the collection, analysis, use, and publication of educator diversity data can develop and sustain a diverse educator workforce. This guidance includes research on how a diverse educator workforce can enhance student success in school and beyond, describes strategies for SEAs and districts to consider as they begin or build on ongoing efforts, and outlines Federal funding sources to support these efforts. In addition, this guidance addresses directives in Title III of Division H of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023.

The purpose of this qualitative, transformational, phenomenological, action research study is to ascertain how race, class, and gender coalesce to impact the success of Black women at predominantly white institutions. The term "success" in the context of this study holds layered meanings, particularly from a Black feminist perspective that emphasizes both individual achievement and collective well-being within systems marked by structural inequality. In the realm of higher education, success cannot merely be defined by traditional metrics such as degree attainment, career advancement, or social mobility. Instead, it encompasses the nuanced experiences of navigating and resisting intersecting systems of oppression--racism, sexism, and classism--within predominantly white institutions (PWIs) (Hill Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1989). Drawing on Black feminist thought, success for Black women involves achieving academic and professional goals while maintaining a sense of self-definition and authenticity in environments that often marginalize or undermine their identities (Hill Collins, 2000). It requires cultivating resilience and community--leveraging personal strength and communal support networks to confront barriers and redefine narratives of achievement (Winkle-Wagner, 2015). Success also entails transformative engagement, wherein Black women actively resist dominant narratives, create spaces of belonging, and contribute to the empowerment of others within and beyond academia (hooks, 2000). Furthermore, intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) is critical to understanding success in this study, as it accounts for the compounded challenges Black women face at the intersection of race, class, and gender. Success, therefore, involves not only excelling academically but also navigating these intersecting identities in ways that foster holistic well-being--balancing iii personal, cultural, and professional identities while challenging institutional practices that perpetuate inequality. This study explores how Black women define success on their own terms, emphasizing both personal fulfillment and contributions to their communities. Their experiences reveal that success is not merely a destination but an ongoing process of negotiating identity, building support networks, and pushing back against systemic barriers in ways that open doors for others. In this light, success becomes a multifaceted and communal achievement, grounded in individual excellence, collective uplift, and the transformation of exclusionary systems. Black women are entering post-secondary colleges and universities at historical rates however graduation rates fail to corroborate such increases. Implications of existing studies are that barriers exist that hinder success for Black women. This study seeks to understand (1) Why are there so few Black women with doctorate degrees? (2) What are the barriers to completing the degree program? (3) What are the salient qualities Black women see as necessary for graduation? (4) What support systems were most valued while pursuing this degree program? This study should be important to a wide audience since professors, administrators, students, and researchers alike will benefit from understanding the unique social location of Black women as racialized, genderized individuals and the impact on their experiences in higher education. Additionally, all women of color who are currently pursuing an advanced degree can benefit from understanding how to maneuver the academic landscape from the viewpoint of experienced Black Women, those who value the transformative power of shared experiences gained from articulated standpoints and believe in the potential for meaningful reform will recognize the promise inherent in the outcomes of this important research.

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.

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.

This second of six briefs analyzing data from the U.S. Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), covering the 2020-21 school year, explores enrollment of students with disabilities by race, gender, English proficiency, and primary disability to gain a fuller picture of educational equity. It is recognized that such categories can, at times, conceal as many differences as they reveal. However, it is believed that attention to differences in access by student groups opens a broader conversation about ensuring equity for all students, regardless of their individual circumstances.

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share detailed results and more fully describe the sample and methods used to produce the research brief, "COVID's Impact on Science Achievement: Trends from 2019 through 2024. We investigated three main research questions in this brief: 1) How did science achievement in 2021 and 2024 compare to achievement in 2019, before the pandemic? 2) How much additional schooling was required in spring 2021 and spring 2024 to return to spring 2019 levels? 3) How do these patterns differ by race/ethnicity?

This brief continues ongoing research by NWEA® examining the degree to which the COVID-19 pandemic, and its associated school closures, influenced student learning. Prior research focused on math and reading and found that the pandemic's negative impact steadily accumulated during the 2020-2021 school year, with significant disparities in achievement and growth compared to prepandemic trends (Lewis, Kuhfeld, Ruzek, & McEachin, 2021). Although there were modest rebounds in reading and math during the 2021-2022 school year, progress toward pandemic recovery largely stalled in 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, with achievement and growth trends still trailing behind prepandemic levels (Kuhfeld & Lewis, 2022; Lewis & Kuhfeld, 2023; Lewis & Kuhfeld, 2024). Building on previous research series focused on math and reading achievement, this brief explores how the pandemic influenced student achievement in science. It examines science test scores across seven school years to understand how COVID-19 influenced science achievement.

In August 2017, the Houston area was ravaged by one of the costliest natural disasters in history--Hurricane Harvey. In this brief, the first in a two-part series, the authors examine the effects of Harvey on student homelessness in the Houston Independent School District (Houston ISD). The authors find that student homelessness in Houston ISD quadrupled due to Harvey, and most students experiencing homelessness lived, at least temporarily, in unsheltered contexts, such as sleeping in a car or on the street. Unlike other high-profile storms such as Hurricane Katrina, students who became homeless due to Harvey tended to be broadly representative of the district in terms of their demographic characteristics. However, they differed systematically from students who experienced homelessness for conventional, economic reasons such as job loss and medical debt, who were particularly likely to be Black. The authors conclude with implications of these findings for educational stakeholders in preparation for both generational and "everyday" homelessness crises.

Targeted school funding is a potentially valuable policy lever to increase educational equality by race, ethnicity, and income, but it remains unclear how to target funds most effectively. We use a regression discontinuity approach to compare districts that narrowly passed or failed a school funding election. We use close tax elections in 9 states to identify effects of operating funds and close bond elections in 8 states to identify effects of capital funds. Results indicate positive achievement returns to spending, especially for math achievement and for operating funds. We find similar returns to spending by race, ethnicity, and income (not statistically different), but we find significantly larger returns for students in low-resource districts than in high-resource districts, including larger returns for Black, Latinx, and low-income students. Mediation analyses suggest spending on teacher salaries and counselors may be particularly effective mechanisms to increase achievement among Black and low-income students. [Additional funding for this report was provided by the Gilead Foundation Creating Possible Fund and the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University.]

Specialized high schools are an increasingly popular way to prepare young adults for postsecondary experiences and expand school choice. While much literature ex- amines charter school spillover effects and the effects of specialized schools on the students who attend them, little is known about the spillover effects of specialized high schools on traditional public schools (TPS). Using an event study design, we show that one type of specialized high school, North Carolina's Cooperative Innovative High Schools, initially attracted students who were higher achieving and more likely to be white than TPS students, but these specialized schools became more representative of the district population over time. On average, the opening of specialized schools had a mix of null and positive spillover effects on TPS student achievement. While there is some evidence of negative spillovers from the first schools that opened, the effects become more positive over time.

Catholic schools have seen more than a 30% decline in enrollment over the past 20 years. While some of the decline in enrollment may have been spurred by secular trends or the Church abuse scandal, the increase in schools of choice, principally public charter schools, may explain at least some of this decline. In this paper we estimate the effect of the opening of charter schools in proximity to Catholic schools across the entire U.S. We find that the opening of a nearby charter school has a negative impact on Catholic school enrollment and increases the likelihood that the school will close. We also find that charter openings induce greater racial isolation. Findings are especially pronounced in K8 schools, rather than high schools.

Food insecurity is widespread among college students in the United States. Food benefits delivered through the CalFresh program, California's version of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), can reduce hunger by helping students pay for groceries, but may not reach all eligible students. To date, higher education systems have lacked good estimates of the share of their students who are eligible for CalFresh and the share who actually receive benefits. To address this information gap, the California Policy Lab (CPL) partnered with the California Community College (CCC) Chancellor's Office, the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), and the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC) to build a linked database of student-level administrative data on college enrollment, financial aid, and CalFresh participation. This database covers all students enrolled at CCC or UC campuses from academic years 2010-11 through 2021-22, along with corresponding FAFSA submissions and CalFresh participation. Using these data, researchers are able to measure how many college students are likely eligible for CalFresh, and of those how many participate. This report was updated in August 2024 with updated eligibility statistics that reflect results from a refined simulation of student eligibility for CalFresh. Using the improved simulation, the researchers found that among California Community College students, 20% of students were eligible for CalFresh (an increase from the 16% estimate in the June version of this report), among University of California (UC) undergraduates, 33% were eligible (an increase from 31% in the June report), and among UC graduate students, 7% were eligible (an increase from 6%).

This is the technical document for the report, "Centering Quality, Centering Equity: Lessons Learned in Increasing Early Childhood Educator Credentials." The report explores Early Childhood Education (ECE) credential requirements in California (CA) and Washington, D.C. (D.C.) for two key reasons: 1) both recently raised these requirements and 2) both are in the process of implementing the new changes. The study does not seek to advocate in favor of or against the adoption of increased credential requirements. Rather, its purpose is to shed light on the need to center racial and economic equity in policy design and implementation--focusing on the impact of increased credential requirements on early childhood educators in states pursuing these changes. The appendices in this technical document are: (1) Make-up of Early Care and Education Workforce; (2) Center-Based Early Educator Characteristics by Role; (3) Center-Based Early Educator Work Experience and Credentials by Role; (4) Center-Based Early Educator Time Worked, Income, and Wages by Role; (5) Lead Teachers' Work Experience and Credentials by Race and Ethnicity; (6) Lead Teachers without a Postsecondary Degree, Characteristics by Race and Ethnicity; (7) Focus Group Interview Protocol for California; (8) Focus Group Interview Protocol for Washington, D.C.; (9) Hourly Wages for Early Childhood Educators; and (10) Comparison of D.C. Teacher Salaries in 2022 and Minimum Salaries Required in Fiscal Year 2024 for Programs Receiving Pay Equity Funds.

This research uses the implementation of a school suspension ban in Maryland to test whether a top-down state-initiated ban on suspensions in early primary grades can influence school behavior regarding school discipline. Beginning in the fall of 2017, the State of Maryland banned the use of out-of-school suspensions for grades PK-2, unless a student posed an "imminent threat" to staff or students. This research investigates (1) what was the effect of the ban on discipline outcomes for students in both treated grades and upper elementary grades not subject to the ban? (2) did schools bypass the ban by coding more events as threatening or increasing the use of in-school suspensions? and (3) were there differential effects for students in groups that are historically suspended more often? Using a comparative interrupted time series strategy, we find that the ban is associated with a substantial reduction in, but not a total elimination of, out-of-school suspensions for targeted grades without substitution of in-school suspensions. Disproportionalities by race and other characteristics remain after the ban. Grades not subject to the ban experienced few effects, suggesting the ban did not trigger a schoolwide response that reduced exclusionary discipline.

We study changes to teacher working conditions from 2016-17 to 2022-23, covering school years before, during, and after the COVID pandemic. We show working conditions were improving leading into the pandemic but declined when the pandemic arrived. Perhaps more surprisingly, the pandemic was not a low point: teacher working conditions have continued to decline during the post-pandemic period. Teachers report worsening working conditions along many dimensions including the level of classroom disruptions, student responsibility, and safety, among others. They also report declines in trust between themselves and principals, parents, and other teachers. Trends in working conditions since the pandemic are similar in schools serving more and less socioeconomically advantaged students. However, schools in districts where online learning was the predominant mode of instruction during the 2020-21 school year have experienced larger declines than other schools.

The Wallace Foundation commissioned Research for Action and McClanahan Associates to study how out-of-school time intermediaries (OSTIs) responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and the role they could play in supporting communities moving forward. Citywide out-of-school time (OST) systems encompass a wide variety of afterschool and summer programs and associated provider organizations, youth participants, and their families. These systems were stretched during the COVID-19 pandemic and the national racial reckoning to respond to community needs in new and more equitable ways. Also impacted were OSTIs that manage OST systems within individual cities. OSTIs operate through various governance structures and perform a range of coordination functions intended to ensure quality, access, and equity in OST systems so that all youth have access to the unique out-of-school resources and opportunities they need to thrive.

This chartbook is the 14th version to be produced for the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The Chartbook describes the diversity of the Appalachian Region on a host of demographic and economic measures and provides an important annual view of the area and its people. The data contained in the 2018-2022 Chartbook describe how residents in the Appalachian Region were faring before and during the COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020. Nearly half of the years during this time period were pre-pandemic and half were during the pandemic era. Thus, this Chartbook is a blend of these two eras. As future data releases reflect the post-pandemic era, data users will have additional insights on the long-term changes that the pandemic brought to Appalachia's social and economic dynamics. Most of the data shown here come from the 2018-2022 American Community Survey (ACS), a nationwide study collected continuously every year in every county in the United States by the U.S. Census Bureau. The ACS is designed to provide communities with reliable and timely demographic, social, economic, and housing data each year. To provide as much county-level data as possible, we use ACS 5-year data files which provide reliable estimates for geographic areas with fewer than 20,000 people. Since many counties in the Appalachian Region have fewer than 20,000 residents, these data permit comparable statistics for all 423 counties in the Region. The primary purpose of the ACS is to measure the changing characteristics of the U.S. population in a way that is continually updated. The estimates in this Chartbook, therefore, are data collected over the five-year (or 60-month) period from January 2018 through December 2022. These ACS estimates are not averages of monthly or annual values, but rather an aggregation of data collected continuously over that time period.

National context: Schools across the United States have long grappled with the role and impact of school-based police officers, often referred to as school resource officers (SROs). Proponents for school-based policing believe that SROs contribute to school safety by preventing or addressing crime and violence in schools. Opponents of SROs in schools argue that the presence of SROs criminalizes students and increases the likelihood of school-based arrest, particularly for students of color. Policies around SROs vary in districts across the country. Chicago context: In the wake of George Floyd's murder in 2020, the Chicago Board of Education (CBOE) asked the district to develop a plan to phase-out the SRO program, which assigned two SROs to most Chicago Public Schools (CPS) high schools. In February 2024, the CBOE voted to remove all remaining SROs from schools starting in 2024-25. In May 2024, CPS proposed a Whole School Safety Policy that did not include SROs and focused on supports for physical safety, emotional safety, and relational trust in schools. The research: This brief examines what happened when Chicago Public Schools (CPS) began the process of removing School Resource Officers (SROs) from its high schools during the 2020-21 school year. These findings can inform conversations in Chicago, and across the country, about SROs and whole school safety practices and policies--while recognizing that questions about the presence of police and the experience of safety in schools are complex and reflect differences in lived experiences and perspectives across policymakers, practitioners, young people, families, and communities. The findings are part of a larger, ongoing study by researchers from the UChicago Consortium; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Lurie Children's Hospital's Center for Childhood Resilience. [This research brief received additional support from the Pritzker-Pucker Family Foundation and the Consortium Investor Council.]

For decades, assessing income has served as the tried-and-true method for creating financial aid packages--scholarships, grants, and loans--for the nation's college students. Each year, students and families living with low and moderate incomes submit income documentation to colleges, states, and the federal government in hopes of qualifying for financial aid to defray college costs. But what if a student's wealth status revealed more about their ability to cover college costs than their income did? Income is an important measure, but it provides only a snapshot of the full resources available to students and their families. Wealth, too, impacts a student's access and ability to pay for college as well as their chances of graduating and turning career aspirations into a well-paying job and fulfilling life. Examining income alone masks deep and persistent inequities in wealth by race or ethnicity. This gap, which is rooted in generations of discrimination and systemic barriers to opportunity, affects the college dreams of countless people, particularly those from historically marginalized communities. Limitations in available data mean researchers and policymakers know relatively little about how wealth impacts higher education, with far more attention focused on understanding and addressing the effects of income. This paper seeks to address that missing piece by exploring the impact of wealth on students' experiences in higher education and how these experiences, in turn, influence wealth-building.

This paper investigates how teachers learn about race in the school context, with a particular focus on teachers' development of racial competency. Using in-depth, semi-structured interviews we find that teachers learn through three sources: from their peers, from years of experience, and from teacher preparation and in-service experiences. Furthermore, we find that learning occurs both informally and formally and that these sources of learning are moderated by three contextual factors: career status, school culture, and out-of-school factors We find that teachers rely most on informal avenues and encounters to develop racial competency.

Student debt has exploded over the past several decades, rising to over $1.7 trillion. Federal student loans represent over 90% of student loan balances, with private financing making up the remainder. Research has shown that the negative impact of student debt has not been distributed equally across different demographics, with Black borrowers disproportionately feeling the adverse effects of student debt. Yet to date, little research has explored how monthly repayment burdens-- defined as the borrower's monthly payment as a share of their earnings--vary across different demographic groups or how that may relate to the specific fixed-payment structure of student loans. This study uses the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), a comprehensive national survey of U.S. families' financial lives, to identify differences in monthly repayment burdens across racial groups. The study found that, on average, Black borrowers pay a greater percentage of their monthly income toward student loans than white borrowers.

This brief examines the experiences of California high school seniors from the graduating class of 2023, offering insights into their preparation, plans, and concerns for college prior to enrollment. Drawing on results from a large-scale survey of seniors, the findings reveal important variation in students' secondary school experiences and their plans for college, particularly by race/ethnicity and gender identity. As students' experiences in high school influence concerns about their college futures, these results represent an important marker of what college going may look like for future graduating cohorts and can help policymakers and practitioners better understand the context of students' postsecondary decisions and pathways.