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Student service member/veteran (SSM/V) university enrollment has grown exponentially in recent years. In response, many U.S. universities have developed military-focused student services to address navigational and social challenges SSM/Vs face on campus. While research suggests these services are beneficial, few studies have empirically examined how often contemporary SSM/Vs engage with them across universities, how engagement connects to predictors of university success, or how SSM/Vs describe such connections. Using social capital theory, surveys (n=531), and interviews (n=59) of SSM/Vs across four universities, we analyze SSM/V military-focused service engagement levels, correlations between engagement and campus belonging and institutional satisfaction, and SSM/V perspectives on engagement. Findings suggest SSM/Vs very rarely engage in these services. Higher engagement, however, is significantly associated with more campus belonging and institutional satisfaction. Interviewees describe how the moral support military-focused service staff offer while providing reliable administrative assistance, as well as SSM/V-dedicated spaces and community building, foster belonging and satisfaction.

Asian Americans as a group are overrepresented among STEM college graduates and have the highest average college enrollment rate of any racial or ethnic category. Thus, Asian Americans are typically excluded from educational interventions directed at improving STEM education for Students of Color because they are not considered to be underrepresented minorities. However, statistics obscure the individual needs of the more than 20 ethnic subgroups that fall under the umbrella term Asian Americans. Using a participatory action research approach, this paper documents the institutional and sociocultural factors that push out HMoob (or Hmong) American college students from STEM programs at one large, predominantly White university; and the coordinate processes of gatekeeping and transactional advising that either redirect those students toward non-STEM programs or force them out of the university completely.

Over a 6-year period, a sociolinguistic and sociocultural project was undertaken by Alaska Native expert educators and linguists (aka the Yup'ik Expert Group) from the Yup'ik community in the Lower Kuskokwim School District, Central Alaska. The native experts developed their own culturally sustainable, valid, and reliable Kindergarten through Grade 6 Alaska Native language (Yugtun) assessment. Yup'ik experts named their assessment the Yugtun Piciryaranek Qaneryaranek-llu Cuqyun (aka Yup'ik Culture and Language Measurement). This paper focuses on a foundational component of the assessment, the Yup'ik Cultural Awareness subtest, which has two components, Nonverbal Communication and Yup'ik Worldview.

This article clarifies historical and sociocultural factors that impact the role of STEM in the racialization of Asian Americans. Drawing on critical race and other theories of Asian American racialization, and a review of empirical research on the experiences of Asian American college students in STEM, we develop a conceptual framework called "STEM Asianization" that highlights the role of STEM ideology in the model minority racialization of Asian Americans. Consequences for Asian American students include (1) erasure of the intersectional experiences of minoritized Asian American students; (2) dehumanization of Asian Americans and establishment of a bamboo ceiling; (3) representation of Asian Americans as a perpetual foreigner/Yellow Peril during times of cultural and political crisis; and (4) representation of Asian Americans who cannot or do not conform to the STEM achievement narrative as a failed minority. We argue that STEM Asianization reproduces White supremacy by ideologically reinforcing the colorblind meritocracy of STEM institutions in the United States. [Additional funding provided by the Wisconsin Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation.]

A large share of Wisconsin's 400+ school districts are rural, and nearly half of all students enrolled in public schools statewide attend rural schools. Persistent challenges faced by rural districts in attracting and retaining educators, however, are contributing to an increasingly dire situation for the state's rural communities. This report summarizes findings from a yearlong research project investigating strategies being used by rural districts to address educator shortages, including a diverse set of "grow your own" (GYO) initiatives which involve school districts working with educator preparation programs (EPPs) and other local partners to identify, recruit, and prepare local candidates to become educators. The mixed-methods research design draws upon two statewide surveys (of rural superintendents and local site coordinators of the Educators Rising GYO program), along with site visits to five rural districts, to accomplish two main goals: (1) to identify strategies being used by rural districts to attract, recruit, and hire teachers; and (2) to describe the landscape of GYO initiatives being utilized by rural Wisconsin districts and local partners to address educator shortages. Broadly speaking, the work suggests that rural school districts are not waiting on state or federal policymakers to solve longstanding staffing challenges for them, but instead are actively engaged in implementing a mix of national GYO programs such as Educators Rising and "homegrown" GYO initiatives as one solution to chronic educator shortages. Not surprisingly, a distinct set of both successes and challenges have emerged as rural districts attempt to implement, launch, sustain, and scale up GYO initiatives that meet their needs. [Paper's original version August 2023; revised version September 2023. This work was made possible by a research grant from UW-Madison's Tommy G. Thompson Center for Public Leadership.]

To comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 and related U.S. Department of Education peer review guidance, state education agencies must provide evidence demonstrating clear alignment (technically referred to as correspondence) between their K-12 English language proficiency standards and their academic content standards. This technical paper provides evidence of match, breadth, consistency [balance of representation], and depth of correspondence between WIDA consortium member state academic content standards in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies, as of Fall 2022, and the components of the WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework, 2020 Edition--specifically the four WIDA Key Language Uses and their grade-level cluster and content area instantiation in the WIDA Language Expectations. It also illustrates the relationship between the grade-level cluster Language Expectations and Proficiency Level 5 of the Proficiency Level Descriptors. State correspondence evidence helps ensure that K-12 students identified as English learners (referred to as multilingual learners by WIDA) have the opportunity to learn the critical elements of language that facilitate access to and achievement of academic content. [For the summary report, see ED631052.]

A wealth of literature shows positive outcomes and experiences from arts learning, yet youth access to arts education has become significantly more inequitable over the past 30 years. Alongside the growing discourse around arts learning and equity issues, there is a recognized and persistent need for more research. We conducted a critical, qualitative study of out-of-school time (OST) arts organizations across the United States. Our primary research questions were: (1) How do community youth arts organizational leaders, teaching artists, and participants describe the leading ideas and practices in OST youth arts programming? (2) How can OST youth arts work center the cultural, historical, and geographic resources that artists and arts organizations bring to arts programming? We first developed a theoretical framework for understanding arts practices in education and summarize key learning outcomes associated with youth participation in the arts. We then talked with OST arts education experts across the United States to understand how their programs support and center youth in arts learning, particularly Black youth, Indigenous youth, and youth of color (BIPOC youth), youth from low-income backgrounds, and LGBTQIA+ youth. This report offers the concept of "cultural-regional scenes" to describe the critical, qualitative case studies we developed of OST youth arts practice. We describe four unique cultural-regional scenes--the Urban Midwest, the Bay Area, Texas-Mexico Border Towns, and the Indigenous Southwest--and provide examples of youth arts practice in each scene. We conclude with ideas that stretch across scenes and suggest that researchers and practitioners can take up this approach in the study of OST youth arts programs. [Written in collaboration with community artists and artist-leaders across the United States and Indigenous Nations.]

This paper relates how leaders of a higher education program, the Wisconsin Collaborative Education Research Network, sparked and managed innovation across communities of scholarship, research, and practice. This paper uses a "design narrative" method to describe how leaders orchestrated organizational change by bringing diverse communities together into research-practice partnerships. The narrative uses the idea of "boundary objects" to describe how initiatives were progressively developed to create more inclusive spaces for sustained innovation. The insights and the capacity that resulted from initial design efforts created a richer space for subsequent initiatives. The paper shows how design narratives can illustrate the role that boundary objects can play in organizational change and concludes with a discussion of the role that leaders can play in creating inclusive cultures of innovation in higher education.

This 15-page document provides a high-level summary and key excerpts from WCER Working Paper No. 2023-3 (ED631017). Readers should consult the full working paper for more in-depth detail and evidence, particularly in the extensive appendices. This technical summary reports on analyses conducted during the standards development process to establish a clear correspondence between the WIDA ELD Standards Framework, 2020 Edition (WIDA's K-12 English language proficiency standards), and the academic content standards used by WIDA consortium member State Education Agencies (SEAs). The analyses assess the match, breadth, balance of representation [consistency], and depth between these two types of standards. The paper also offers evidence of correspondence between these two types of standards and offers a methodology for states to use. It reports on the broad analysis used to update the WIDA ELD Standards Framework to ensure it could be applied flexibly across the consortium. SEA correspondence mappings are specific to individual SEAs. As federal law and peer review indicate the final responsibility for standards lies with states, WIDA is able to offer this technical paper as a tool to support the state correspondence process. [For the full report, see ED631017.]

The recent turn toward core practices and practice-based teacher education has been accompanied by a growing literature on the definitions, pedagogies to teach, and assessments of core practices. Despite these developments, the field lacks core practices performance assessments designed to be used across course sections, courses, and subjects. This paper provides an existence proof of this type of assessment and investigates the affordances and constraints of the approach. The study describes three types of mixed-reality simulation-based performance tasks of three core practices. More than 400 novices in 64 teacher preparation programs in the United States reported that they were able to use the simulation environment and believed the tasks measure important teaching skills. Scores on the tasks were positively related to novices' prior academic and teacher education experiences. Implications for the formative use of such simulations are discussed.

The paper introduces the history and politics of value formation at historically Black colleges/universities (HBCUs) and focuses on how cultural-institutional values associated with Black and minority servingness--such as Black empowerment, ethics of care, and community service--impact the work of educators to coordinate internship opportunities for students. Drawing on interviews with educators at six HBCUs (n=27), this paper documents how such cultural-institutional values impact educational labor by being manifested in institutional discourse, supported through provision of institutional resources, embodied through institutional practices, and measured and assessed though institutional regimes of accountability. Educators work to expand students' access to the market by courting employers to establish networks for internships, and at the same time, work to promote the good reputation of the HBCU by selecting and triaging students who will represent the institution well, by socializing particular social skills, work norms, and dispositions of respectability, and by sociocultural matching of student and employer. This approach creates and expands the internship market for HBCU students; provides students with extra care, advice, and anticipatory socialization for the internship; and matches the student with an employer who may be particularly amenable to supporting the student's development. The paper proposes a value theory of educational labor that highlights and clarifies how cultural-institutional values constitute a specific context that motivates educators' work to serve their students in particular culturally informed ways.

This paper analyzes how employers use discourse to ideologize the value of college internships--a historically emergent form of contingent, temporary, educational labor which has rapidly become a major feature of both higher education and labor relations in the United States (Frenette, 2015). The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with employers (n=38) in firms and organizations across a range of sectors who supervise and coordinate the work of college student interns from two public universities and two technical colleges located in different economic regions within the same U.S. Midwestern state. Using the anthropological theory of value (Graeber, 2001), we develop an analysis of how employers use discourse to ideologize and coordinate internship labor. Employers use three discourses of value to ideologize 1) the individual intern as the primary beneficiary of the internship ("entrepreneurial discourse of value"); 2) the organization or firm as the primary beneficiary of the internship ("corporate efficiency discourse of value"); and 3) the community, industry, or society in general as the primary beneficiary of the internship ("community service discourse of value"). The article develops the concept of a "discourse token of value"--discursive forms that (like cash) mediate value--as a central concept of the analysis of emergent forms of education and labor.

This policy brief is one in a series which examines selected topics related to Wisconsin's educator workforce. This brief presents a descriptive profile of Wisconsin's principal and assistant principal labor force over the past 20 years in terms of key attributes such as counts of both types of administrators, selected demographic characteristics (including gender, race/ethnicity, age, and years of experience), and distribution across locale type (urban, suburban, town, rural) and region of the state. Specific questions this brief addresses are as follows: (1) How has the number of principals and assistant principals working in Wisconsin public schools changed over the past two decades, and how does this compare to trends in student enrollment; (2) How has the distribution of Wisconsin principals and assistant principals by locale type and region of the state (including the state's largest districts) changed over the past two decades; and (3) How have selected characteristics of Wisconsin's principals and assistant principals changed over time? [For "Selected Characteristics of Teachers in Wisconsin Public Schools, 1999-00 to 2020-21," see ED624420.]

This policy brief is one in a series which examines selected topics related to Wisconsin's educator workforce. The goal of this brief is to present a descriptive profile of Wisconsin's teacher labor force over the past 20 years in terms of key attributes such as overall numbers of teachers, what they teach, and where they teach, and selected demographic characteristics (including gender, race/ethnicity, age, and years of experience). Specific questions this brief addresses are as follows: (1) How has the number of teaching staff in Wisconsin public schools changed over the past two decades, and how does this compare to trends in student enrollment; (2) How has the distribution of Wisconsin teachers across area of teaching assignment, geographic locale type (including the state's largest districts), and region of the state changed over the past two decades; and (3) How have selected characteristics of Wisconsin's teaching force (gender, race/ethnicity, age, years of experience, and highest degree held) changed over time? [For "Selected Characteristics of Principals and Assistant Principals in Wisconsin Public Schools, 1999-00 to 2019-20," see ED624419.]

This policy brief, produced by the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as part of the Region 10 Comprehensive Center, is one in a series examining selected topics related to Wisconsin's educator workforce. The goal of this brief is to summarize key trends in the use of emergency credentials within Wisconsin's public schools in recent years, which is a topic of interest for at least two reasons. A first reason is that increased reliance by Wisconsin school districts on emergency credentials as a strategy for filling vacant positions would serve as a meaningful indicator that widely-reported shortages of educators are worsening. A second policy implication associated with emergency credentials is a potential equity issue. To the extent that emergency credentials are being used by some districts and schools more than others, particularly for teaching positions and by districts and schools with higher shares of traditionally marginalized students, state and local policymakers should question whether additional supports and resources may be necessary to ensure that all students have access to highly-qualified educators.

This summary report highlights the key findings across all three iterations of the Minnesota Safe Learning Survey. Consistently, all three respondent groups, across all three survey distributions reported concerns about mental health, a message heard far beyond this survey. As time pressed on and educators, students, and families adapted and became quite flexible, moving in and out of various modes of learning, sometimes in masks, sometimes in quarantine, they reported that learning got better as did approaches to communication and relationship building. [The following people collaborated on this report: Heather Mueller, Wendy Hatch, Denise Specht, Deborah Henton, Jon Millerhagen, and Kirk Schneidawind. For "Minnesota Safe Learning Survey: Winter 2021 Survey of Minnesota Educators, Families, and Students" (ED615428). For "Minnesota Safe Learning Survey: Spring 2021 Survey of Minnesota Educators, Families, and Students" (ED615427). The Fall 2021 report is not available on the publisher's website at this time.]

This paper discusses the purpose and content of the WIDA Framework for Equitable Instruction (FEI). The FEI is an instruction-focused resource designed to promote the equitable engagement in disciplinary learning and language development of multilingual learners. It complements the WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework in that it offers guidance on how educators can design learning environments that promote language growth in the context of disciplinary learning. The paper details the approach to language instruction reflected in the FEI and describes its four key principles. The paper also discusses the different components of the FEI: cross-disciplinary teacher actions that promote equitable learning and language practices, as well as discipline-specific teacher actions, student actions, language functions, and language trajectories. The paper concludes with guidance on how educators can use the FEI to strengthen their instructional practices for multilingual learners. The appendices offer discipline-specific illustrations of the framework's components and a glossary.

Professional societies (ProSs) are instrumental in shaping science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) cultural norms. Existing legacy structures designed to serve majority groups and constructed in service of dominant norms and values present a clear obstacle to attracting, retaining, and serving minoritized STEM professionals, such as women, particularly women with additional intersecting marginalized statuses (Solebello et al., 2016). In this perspective article, we in the Amplifying the Alliance to Catalyze Change for Equity in STEM Success project, known as ACCESS+, explain our development of an adapted diversity, equity, and inclusion assessment tool. ACCESS+ is an NSF ADVANCE Partnership that is adapting a pre-existing tool known as the Diversity and Inclusion Progression Framework, which was developed in the United Kingdom jointly by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Science Council (2021). As with the original version, the purpose of the U.S. adaptation--the Equity Environmental Scanning Tool, or EEST--is to provide STEM ProSs with a way to benchmark their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, discern areas of organizational strength, and identify foci for organizational remediation. In this piece, we share background information for EEST refinement, including content adaptations and structural changes.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professional societies (ProS) are uniquely positioned to foster national-level diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) reform. ProS serve broad memberships, define disciplinary norms and culture, and inform accrediting bodies, thus providing "excellent leverage with which to design and promote change" (National Academy of Sciences et al., 2005). ProS could be instrumental in achieving the DEI culture reform necessary to optimize engagement of all STEM talent by leveraging disciplinary excellence resulting from diverse teams. Inclusive STEM culture reform requires that underlying "mental models'' be examined (Kania et al., 2018). The "Inclusive Professional Framework for Societies (IPF:Societies)" can help ProS change leaders (i.e., "boundary spanners'") and organizations identify and address mental models hindering DEI reform. "IPF:Societies" uses four "I's"--Identity awareness and Intercultural mindfulness (i.e., equity mindset) on which Inclusive relationships and Influential DEI actions are scaffolded. We discuss how "IPF:Societies" complements existing DEI tools. We explain how "IPF:Societies" can be applied to existing ProS policy and practice associated with common ProS functions (e.g., leadership, membership, conferences, awards, and professional development). Next steps are to pilot "IPF:Societies" with a cohort of STEM ProS. Ultimately, "IPF:Societies" has potential to promote more efficient, effective, and lasting DEI organizational transformation, and contribute to inclusive STEM disciplinary excellence.

Created by LatCrit scholars in the mid-2000s, Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) is an antideficit framework for understanding educational inequality. Since its publication, Yosso's (2005) seminal paper on the topic has been cited thousands of times by scholars in fields as distinct as engineering, K-12 education, and public health. This paper reviews the recent scholarship on college students' experiences and outcomes that uses CCW as a guiding framework. Although the intended audience for this review is career services professionals in colleges and universities, my hope is it can also be helpful for scholars of career development who want to brush up on the CCW literature and consider future research questions the framework presents. The existing literature offers insights on the college-to-career transition. It reveals the centrality of familial capital in shaping students' career pathways, the function of resistant capital in forming students' career interests, the utility of students' existing social capital in the job search process, and the role of counterspaces in activating CCW for career success. However, CCW scholarship typically focuses on college students' matriculation, persistence, sources of support, and wellbeing, not on their career development--including the psychological, spiritual, sociocultural, political and economic factors influencing students' career interests and the knowledge, relationships, and environmental contexts shaping their career choices (Duffy & Dik, 2009). This gap presents opportunities for researchers and career services professionals to partner in creating and evaluating programming with CCW in mind. There are also opportunities to increase the methodological diversity of CCW scholarship, to consider the ways in which students mix CCW with "dominant" forms of capital for career success, to collect data from employers, faculty, and other gatekeepers, and to account for the role of institutional context.

Seeking to understand the experiences of educators, families, and students in K-12 public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wisconsin-Minnesota Comprehensive Center (WMCC)--working with the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE)--has developed the Safe Learning Survey that is being conducted at three intervals: Winter (February), Spring (May-June), and Fall (October-November), 2021. To date, two public reports have been published sharing the results of the Safe Learning Surveys conducted in the Winter (February) and Spring (May-June) of 2021. These reports provide a comprehensive description of the findings for each survey: (1) Winter 2021 Minnesota Safe Learning Survey (ED615428); and (2) Spring 2021 Minnesota Safe Learning Survey (ED615427). The purpose of this companion brief is to provide additional information disaggregated (i.e., broken down) by district geography and student race/ethnicity on five key themes and potential areas for policy and practice improvement: learning, connectedness, engagement, technology, and racism and racial microaggressions. Such disaggregation of data is an important step in understanding how to provide equitable supports that are tailored to the needs of particular communities. [The following people collaborated on this report: Heather Muller, Wendy Hatch, Denise Specht, Deborah Henton, Jon Millerhagen, and Kirk Schneidawind.]

As the 2020-2021 school year began, the Wisconsin-Minnesota Comprehensive Center (WMCC)--working with Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and housed at the University of Minnesota's (UMN) Center for Applied Research & Educational Improvement (CAREI), the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative (WEC), and Education Analytics (EA)-- determined that surveys of educators, students, and families over the course of the school year would be prudent to capture the experiences of these key groups, learn from this unprecedented time, and plan for the future. This survey, the Safe Learning Survey, was developed to get a true picture of how those being most impacted by the MDE's Safe Learning Plan are experiencing it. The survey is being deployed at three intervals, Winter (February), Spring (May-June), and Fall (October) 2021, with statewide reports following the conclusion of each survey window. The second Safe Learning Survey, the subject of this report, was conducted from May 5, 2021 to June 18, 2021. Over 10,500 respondents, including 2,844 educators, 1,685 students, and 6,004 family members completed the survey this spring. Although the survey was sent statewide via school and district leaders, somewhat uneven and concentrated responses, both geographically and by respondent type, were observed. Additionally, the response rate for this second survey was approximately half the size of that for the first survey from the winter of 2021. It is the continued hope of the WMCC that data from the Minnesota Safe Learning Surveys will continue to provide insights as to how educators, students, and families are feeling about school during this unprecedented time in history. [For the first report, "Minnesota Safe Learning Survey: Winter 2021 Survey of Minnesota Educators, Families, and Students," see ED615428. This report was co-produced by the University of Minnesota, College of Education and Human Development.]

Internships and other forms of work-based learning are increasingly viewed as essential experiences for college students. Proponents point out that internships help students develop transferable skills, apply academic knowledge to authentic situations, develop professional networks, and facilitate students' socialization and entry into the professions. In recent years, online or virtual internships, which can vary according to duration, structure, and activities, have grown in prominence. The COVID-19 pandemic brought considerable interest in these unique types of internships, as many in-person positions were cancelled or shifted online. Yet little empirical research exists on the prevalence, quality, and commitment to equity and access among online internships in the United States, particularly during the pandemic period of 2020 to early 2021. In this multi-site case study, we collected survey and interview data from college students during the pandemic. Our findings focus on three distinct cases: (1) two independent websites that provide online internship networking platforms (OINP) for students seeking online internships and employers seeking student interns (n=183 surveys, n=45 interviews), (2) 11 colleges and universities (n=9,964 surveys), and (3) a single employer-hosted online internship program at TreeHouse Foods Inc, a multi-national firm engaged in manufacturing and distributing private label food and beverage products. In analyzing and interpreting our data, we used the Internship Scorecard framework (Hora et al., 2020) from the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions. The framework provides a structured approach to studying internships, as well as insights from research on remote work and digital learning. One of our primary conclusions is that while considerable variation exists within the world of internships writ large, an added layer of complexity exists for online positions with respect to information technology, internet access, work-life boundaries, and challenges associated with online or remote work that many occupations experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that these additional concerns and factors make online internships--which are unlikely to disappear post-pandemic--a top priority for improvement, equitable access, and quality control in the field of higher education.

Lucy Calkins' curriculum "Units of Study for Writing" is a process approach to writing pedagogy used in thousands of elementary and middle schools in the United States and internationally (Teachers College Reading Writing Project, 2020). Process approaches have been highly influential on writing pedagogy for the past 30 years (Brisk, 2015; Hyland, 2003) and continue to be popular in the United States today, particularly in the context of culturally sustaining pedagogy (Alim & Paris, 2017). However, as with all movements in education, we need to step back and critically examine the role of process approaches in promoting equity in the present context. Do this approach and curriculum still meet the needs of today's learners, in particular multilingual learners? Most importantly, do they promote and maintain equitable learning outcomes for all students? This paper examines how Calkins' curriculum conceptualizes the teaching of writing in the disciplines; how one teacher made sense of the curriculum; and what is missing from the curriculum that may limit its curricular and pedagogical appropriateness to promote equity. We focus on one of Calkins' units, "Bringing History to Life" (Calkins & Cockerille, 2013) and one elementary school teacher. We found that in this unit, writing was conceptualized as a cognitive process of thinking, imagining, planning, and noticing. The main writing activities were drafting and free writing, without explicit attention to language. The privileged pedagogy promoted by this unit of study was discovery-led, with achievement based on students' prior knowledge of language and exposure to the genres. As a result, access to the knowledge necessary for achievement was not equally distributed. In this way, we found the "Bringing History to Life" script to be potentially complicit in both creating and maintaining opportunity gaps in writing development, as the students who made progress did so because they did not need help from the teacher, and those who needed explicit language teaching to make progress, did not get enough support. We conclude with recommendations for teaching writing with a more visible pedagogy that makes the rules for being a successful writer explicit, visible, and accessible to all.

Past research demonstrates the degree to which extracurricular activities, paid work, and major family responsibilities impinge on student academic trajectories. Largely absent from this body of work is consideration of the ways in which schools and teachers mitigate the adverse consequences of out-of-school obligations and choices on academic outcomes. In this paper, we seek to understand when, and for whom, teachers and administrators exercise their power to accommodate students' out-of-school time commitments. Analyzing 61 interviews with teachers and staff at five high schools that serve predominantly low-income students and survey responses from teachers across the state (N=601), we assess how teachers describe student responsibilities and accommodate student responsibilities outside of school. We identify the ways teachers portray the classed nature of different student responsibilities and the kinds of solutions they provide to help resolve the tensions between student responsibilities and academic life. We find that school staff describe a range of student responsibilities and identify these responsibilities as connected to students' social-class status. Teacher responses to student responsibilities are largely individual and ad hoc. When administrators report addressing the impacts of student responsibilities through structural change, this change often specifically centers students' paid work (usually intensive paid work that contributes to family finances) while neglecting other types of responsibilities (such as caregiving).

Much of history demonstrates the detriment schools inflicted on students of color, Indigenous students, and their families. Schools once operated to destroy the culture and communities of Indigenous students, remove the accents of Latinx children to make them more American-- teaching them to be "clean" and acceptable, and ensure Black students were uneducated and remained in the fields. However currently Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) students now represent the majority of the public school population. This alone should trigger schools to reflect on and, in many cases, reevaluate how they are instructing students, academically and socially. Even more so, the historical relationship of schools and BIPOC students should prompt leaders to move from centering whiteness and exclusivity to culturally responsive schooling. Minnesota ranks near the bottom of all U.S. states in shrinking the achievement gaps between students of color and white students. It also has a history of disproportionate discipline practices towards Black and brown students. This brief offers a framework to enact this change through Culturally Responsive School Leadership (CRSL). The four major components of CRSL are: (1) critical self-awareness; (2) culturally responsive curricula and teacher preparation; (3) culturally responsive and inclusive school environments; and (4) engaging students and partners in community context.

Internships are a widely promoted high-impact practice (HIP) across the postsecondary landscape, particularly among minority-serving institutions (MSIs), where internships are seen as potentially transformative vehicles for students' career success and social mobility. However, little research exists on how the design, implementation, and ultimate effects of college internships vary (or should vary) according to the unique institutional contexts of MSIs and students' racial identities and cultural backgrounds. This idea is based on research demonstrating that a "one-size-fits-all" approach to classroom teaching and student advising, and broader approaches to student engagement, ignore historic and structural inequalities while also overlooking the unique needs, circumstances and potentials of a diverse student body. Our main goal in this paper is to review the literature on internships in Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) and with Latinx college students to determine if internship program design, implementation, and student experience vary based on the unique institutional contexts of HSIs and/or the racial and cultural attributes of Latinx college students. We conducted an integrative review of the literature on HIPs in general and internships in particular as they relate to Latinx students and HSIs. Results indicate a small but growing body of empirical research on these topics. Some studies highlight how specific features of HSIs (e.g., institutional missions, "servingness") and Latinx students (e.g., their family capital, cultural perspectives on work) influence how HIPs and internships are designed and experienced. These insights underscore the importance of accounting for cultural, structural, and historic factors when studying and designing internship programs. We conclude the paper with a review of existing theoretical frameworks for studying HSIs and a proposal for a new research agenda that pays close attention to the role of culture at individual, group, institutional, and societal levels. Ultimately, we contend that while certain universal principles of internship design and implementation are likely to be applicable for HSIs and Latinx students, there are critical differences and opportunities for internships in these institutions and for these students that should be acknowledged and incorporated into HIP-related policymaking and practice.

The Wisconsin-Minnesota Comprehensive Center (WMCC)--housed at the University of Minnesota's (UMN) Center for Applied Research & Educational Improvement (CAREI), the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative (WEC), and Education Analytics (EA)--works directly with the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) on specific projects to benefit students and educators across the state of Minnesota. In the spring of 2020, the WMCC gathered information about districts' and individuals' experiences with distance learning by conducting focus groups with a variety of stakeholders (a total of 25 sessions with 153 participants) and completing a systematic review of a sample of over 250 district distance learning plans from across the state. Information from these sources, as well as a wealth of information from educators collected through the University of Minnesota's Spring 2020 Minnesota PK-12 Distance Learning Survey, was used to inform the WMCC's decision to develop a statewide survey to gather longitudinal feedback regarding the state's Safe Learning Plan amid the continued navigation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The WMCC developed the Minnesota Safe Learning Survey to examine educators', students' (grades 6-12), and families' educational experiences during the first half of the 2020-21 academic year. The purpose of this survey was to get a true picture of how those being most impacted by the Safe Learning Plan are experiencing it. The survey will be deployed at three intervals, February, May, and October 2021, with statewide reports following the conclusion of each survey window. This is the first of three reports that will be produced. This information will inform future MDE planning and support that the WMCC and the UMN's College of Education and Human Development may be able to provide MDE, policymakers, districts, and schools. Over 23,000 respondents, including 9,333 educators, 2,988 students, and 11,651 family members completed the survey between February 8 and February 26, 2021. Although the survey was sent statewide via school and district leaders, somewhat uneven and concentrated responses, both geographically and by respondent type, were observed. It is the hope of the WMCC that data from the Minnesota Safe Learning Surveys will continue to provide insights as to how educators, students, and families are feeling about school during this unprecedented time in history. [This report was co-produced by the University of Minnesota, College of Education and Human Development.]

Leaders across the state of Minnesota and nation proclaim to want to diversify the educator workforce. However, the reality nationwide is that less than 20% of teachers who teach a student population that is at least 51% students of color are teachers of color (Ingersoll et al., 2018). What follows are a number of research briefs organized around a theory of action for diversifying the educator workforce. Each of the components of this theory of action is supported by a brief that overviews the literature and evidenced based practices. These briefs are intended to help leaders at the local, state, and national levels not only confirm the necessity, the 'Why', of diversifying the educator workforce, but also to begin to gain a better understanding of the 'How'.

The Exploring Making Through Mobile Emergent Technologies (EMMET) program sought to disrupt the trajectory from rural high school to factory floor by introducing STEM and computational thinking (STEM+C) skills through mentorship training and hands-on activities involving creative production--often referred to as "making." The program also bridged the divide between formal school science education and informal opportunities for science learning outside of school--a division that has marginalized young people from science class and devalued everyday science experiences (Stocklmayer et al., 2010). The overall project focused on designing maker experiences, training local high school students as "maker-mentors" for their community, developing partnerships with area community-based organizations, and researching what program participants learn about STEM and computational thinking. The work described in this white paper offers a model for regions with distributed, rural populations to build capacity for young people to develop skills and self-efficacy in STEM+C fields. This paper aims to answer the following questions: (1) How are rural communities impacted by mobile making experiences that involve community mentors as instructors? (2) What do maker-mentors learn as a result of their participation in facilitating mobile making experiences? and (3) What aspects of the community-involved maker experiences are sustained beyond institutional intervention? [This paper was written with contributions from Tim Fetting, Vicki Jeppesen, and Darren Ackley.]

This series of rapid briefs is being developed by the Wisconsin-Minnesota Comprehensive Center - Region 10 (WMCC10). The purpose of these briefs is to provide succinct and timely guidance on best practices for schools and school-based early learning programs regarding the assessment of student learning, with the goal of informing instructional planning and decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. This brief synthesizes guidance from the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and existing guidance offered by professional educational associations, assessment/test vendors, state departments of education, and educational organizations. This brief is intended for instructional and school/program leaders (including but not limited to principals, curriculum directors, instructional coaches, assessment coordinators, early learning coordinators, and special education administrators).

This document summarizes a review of research, evaluation, resources, and stakeholder knowledge related to the topic of remote support for English Learners. Databases used for conducting this review included Google Scholar, ERIC, and JSTOR. Search terms used include but are not limited to "remote learning support English learners"; "English language learners" AND "remote education". However, searches within these databases returned limited applicable resources. Many of the peer-reviewed articles found within these search parameters returned results mostly applicable to adult learners. It seems as though much of this research for K-12 learners will be forthcoming. Thus, for purposes of this review, resources were included from trusted organizations. These resources were found through Google searches using phrases such as "EL students remote learning support" and "EL student support COVID-19". These resources provide information pertinent to the current COVID-19 situation, information which is seemingly not yet widely available in peer-reviewed journals. Findings have been separated into two tables: one includes links to online resources and one includes peer-reviewed articles. Despite the difference in resource type, findings across resources share common themes to consider.

This document summarizes a review of research, evaluation, resources, and stakeholder knowledge related to the topic of "Remote Learning Support for Students with Disabilities." Databases used for conducting this review included: Google Scholar, EBSCO general Academic Search, EBSCO ERIC, and 'Disability in the Modern World.' Literature from peer-reviewed, scholarly journals were reviewed (noted with an asterisk), along with conference papers, reports, and resources from education research centers and institutions. The search was limited to studies and sources published from 2000-2020. Sources were also vetted for readability. Search terms used include but are not limited to: "Remote Learning Support for Students with Disabilities" or "Remote learning support." The search for resources about "Remote Learning Support for Students with Disabilities" turned up many research papers and also a handful of resources from research and education centers. The knowledge database describes these resources in two tables, one for research papers and one for technical assistance and education centers. Overall, findings indicate that challenges involved with remote learning for students with disabilities are not new and that over the last five years, many resources have been developed. A handful of themes, listed in this review, emerged from the knowledge base.

The Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative (WEC) has conducted a review of relevant literature on and existing efforts to promote youth participation in decision making, particularly in the context of education. The purpose of this review is to support capacity building efforts within the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (WI DPI) and the School of Education at UW-Madison (UW SOE) towards family engagement and youth participatory decision making in K12 schools. This review resulted in two 'knowledge bases': (1) a review of the research, evidence, and theoretical work about youth participatory decision making; and (2) a review of existing efforts towards youth participatory decision-making. The "literature review" knowledge base lists research papers from within the last 15 years. It includes examples of youth participatory decision making that have been studied and also frameworks defining and operationalizing different forms of youth engagement efforts. The "review of existing efforts" knowledge base describes youth participatory decision making programs that have education as a main focus. Entries are organized into geographic categories: international; US: national and regional; state efforts outside of Wisconsin; Wisconsin efforts at WI DPI; WI efforts outside WI DPI; and local efforts, including at WI school districts.

Internships are increasingly promoted as a high-impact practice to improve students' post-graduation employment outcomes, and educators and advisors often encourage students to participate in multiple internships. Yet, there is a lack of research on the socioeconomic and sociocultural factors associated with multiple internship participation for college students. We present findings about such demographic and contextual factors of multiple internship participation--drawing on survey responses, focus groups, and one-year follow-up interviews with students at five postsecondary institutions in the United States, along with interviews with educators and advisors at those institutions and an analysis of online documents about multiple internship participation. Analyses of survey data indicate the socioeconomic privileges associated with multiple internship participation; qualitative data document a particular culture of the multiple internship economy, representing multiple internships as a progressive accumulation of value. Based on these findings, we develop a sociocultural theory of multiple internship participation as a project of neoliberal gatekeeping navigation.

Although policymakers generally appreciate the value of crafting policies that are responsive to teacher and principal voice, doing so in a systematic way is challenging. Educator voices in the room when policies are made are often those of teachers and principals closest to policymakers. In 2019, to broaden the range of educator voices available to policymakers in Wisconsin, we asked more than 2,200 teachers and 700 principals in public schools in Wisconsin how "they" would change policy to improve the academic success of economically disadvantaged students. In total, 1,559 teachers and 601 principals offered suggestions for changing policy across four categories: school level--academic, student level, school level--non-academic, and community level. Though we saw variation in responses based on percent of student body eligible for free and reduced-priced lunch, grade levels served (elementary, middle, high school) and community type (city, suburb, town, rural), many responses appear with similar frequency among practitioners across contexts--indicating promise for making broader changes that impact all schools.

The mission of the University of Wisconsin System is to provide Wisconsin's high school graduates with opportunities to cultivate "intellectual, cultural, and humane sensitivities, scientific, professional and technological expertise, and a sense of purpose." Further, as part of its 2020 strategic plan to meet state workforce needs, the System seeks to increase the number of Wisconsinites who both start college and persist to earn their degree. To reach these goals, high school graduates must first apply for admission to the UW System's two- or four-year institutions. This report analyzes application patterns among Wisconsin high school students who earned their high school diploma in 2016. We find that, among students with similar high school grades and ACT scores, Black students are more likely to apply to a UW System school (and to UW-Madison in particular) than otherwise similar non-Hispanic White students. Economically disadvantaged students and students from rural school districts, on the other hand, are less likely to apply to a UW System school or to UW-Madison, though differences are relatively modest in magnitude. If Wisconsin wants to increase equity in who applies to our public colleges and universities, we suggest targeting outreach to academically successful students eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch, and those attending rural high schools.

This report presents a snapshot of selected features of the condition of education in Wisconsin in 2019. With support from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences, and in collaboration with colleagues at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), the authors set out to measure practices in PK-12 education that they considered especially important for educational equity and success for children in Wisconsin. Public school teachers and administrators in Wisconsin are responsible for educating about 855,000 students between four-year-old kindergarten and twelfth grade. State report cards produced annually by the Wisconsin DPI show how well we are doing as a school system with respect to student outcomes. In this paper, we focus on what principals and teachers in the state are doing. How do kindergarten teachers at both the four-year-old and five-year-old levels engage in play in their classrooms? How do elementary teachers group students for instruction and how frequently do they reconsider these groupings? What sorts of educational opportunities do teachers and schools offer their English language learners and their students with special needs? How supported do teachers feel in their early years in the profession? These are just a few of the questions we asked a representative sample of almost 700 principals and 2,200 teachers in the state. This paper offers a big picture view of instructional practice and educational opportunity in Wisconsin. It makes no claims about what schools and teachers should do to increase equity and success for students in Wisconsin. Instead, it shines a light on the many ways our educators work to support students in the state and, we hope, offers insights into where we might do better.

This document summarizes a review of research, evaluation, resources, and stakeholder knowledge related to the topic of interventions for struggling adolescent readers. Databases used for conducting this review included Google Scholar and ERIC. Literature from peer-reviewed, scholarly journals was reviewed, along with national reading and literacy organizations' websites and white papers from state departments of education and national education organizations. The search primarily was limited to studies and sources published from 2000-2020. Search terms used include but are not limited to: "struggling adolescent readers", "struggling" AND "intervention" AND "adolescent readers", "struggling" AND "adolescent" AND "intervention" AND "policy", etc.

Scholars recognize that K-12 teachers' social interactions, particularly within teaching focused relationships, are important to professional development. This is true whether discussions take place in formal or informal settings. Few studies, however, seek to link the teaching-focused relationships of "college faculty" directly to their instructional practice, nor to explore perceptions of what these relationships entail and how they influence teaching at the college level. Using surveys (n=868), interviews (n=83), and a social capital theoretical framework, this mixed-methods social network analysis explores associations between teaching focused "personal networks"--compilations of relationships surrounding individual faculty-- and the use of evidence-based instructional methods. We also explore faculty perceptions of how network interactions shape their teaching. Quantitative results indicate that the size, range, and strength of faculty teaching-focused personal networks positively correlate with the use of evidence-based instructional methods, while qualitative results point to the ways faculty see different kinds of network ties, relational mechanisms and objects, and returns influencing teaching practice.

Internships are widely promoted extra-curricular experiences that can have positive impacts on student outcomes, yet how specific elements of internships contribute to these outcomes and facilitate learning is understudied. In this sequential mixed-methods study, we use sociocultural learning theory to interpret data from surveys (n = 435) and focus groups (n = 52) with students at five postsecondary institutions. After stepwise linear regression analyses indicated that supervisor behaviors were significantly associated with intern satisfaction and career development, analyses of qualitative data revealed features of positive (clear communication, availability, feedback) and negative (unavailability, inattention to learning) aspects of supervision. These results highlight the value of legitimate peripheral participation in internships, and the need for colleges and employers to carefully design and monitor these pedagogic spaces.

This document was created in response to a request from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to the Wisconsin Minnesota Comprehensive Center (WMCC) Region 10 to provide information on high-quality, qualitative studies about K-2 explicit, systematic phonics instruction. This document is intended to supplement the review document: "Explicit, Systematic Phonics Instruction." This document contains additional resources and theories that may be useful in creating a comprehensive K-2 reading program. It is meant for internal use by the Department of Public Instruction to inform professional development provided to Wisconsin districts, schools and appropriate stakeholders. [For the original review, see ED612073.]

This document was created in response to a request from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to the Wisconsin Minnesota Comprehensive Center (WMCC) Region 10 to provide information on high-quality, qualitative studies about explicit, systematic phonics instruction in grades K-2. It is meant for internal use by the Department of Public Instruction to inform professional development provided to Wisconsin districts, schools, and appropriate stakeholders. The review, with the exception of one research brief from the International Literacy Association, utilizes only material from peer-reviewed journals. Using peer-reviewed articles helps ensure that the articles use rigorous methodology, answer meaningful research questions, and draw valid conclusions. Sources and databases used include Google Scholar; ERIC; "Journal of Early Childhood Literacy;" "Journal of Literacy Research;" "Language Arts;" and the International Literacy Association. [For a supplement to this review, see ED612072.]

By coupling statewide vacancy/application records with administrative data, we find that activity on the teacher labor market is substantially greater than previously documented, with 53% of novice teachers searching for new positions after their first year and 27% changing schools or leaving the public system. The empirical evidence favors preference alignment theory, showing that first-year teachers are more likely to reenter the labor market after their first year when their preferences and their current employment context diverge. This finding is particularly true for the individuals with a preference for a suburban locale and for school and student characteristics, such as the proportion of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. Once an individual has initiated a job search, preference alignment appears to be unrelated to subsequent mobility. The findings suggest that processes that can facilitate a stronger initial match of novice teachers to their desired employment situations may help mitigate turnover in the following year.

Although numerous studies confirm the importance of school principals, schools often experience high turnover rates and principal shortage. However, we know little about the staffing challenges in rural schools and what promotes applicants to apply for and be hired for principalship. In partnership with the Wisconsin Education Career Access Network, we examine the principal labor dynamics in rural schools using statewide job-openings and application information in Wisconsin. We find that all rural communities--"rural fringe," "rural distant," and "rural remote"--receive equal or high number of applications compared to urban districts. Female candidates are significantly less likely to apply to rural districts, while working in the same district is a considerable advantage to being hired. Among district characteristics, the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch tends to reduce the number of applicants in rural schools. Our results highlight the need for policies that are better attuned to the subtle differences in rural contexts.

Research shows that college internships yield academic, economic, and professional benefits. However, the ability to locate and participate in internships is not equitable across all student demographic and socioeconomic spectrums. There are multiple complex barriers to internship participation for students with low socioeconomic status, and for those who are minoritized by race, gender, or other factors. Contextual factors such as finances, work responsibilities, travel, and gendered familial obligations intersect to amplify the challenges to internship participation. In the research described in this paper, the research team conducted focus groups among 24 students from a comprehensive federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institution. The team explored the data using intersectionality theory and comparative case study analysis; and in this paper we present a comparative case study analysis of five students in our study. We determined that delineation of barriers into types, such as financial, social, and cultural, runs the risk of misconstruing students' actual experience when they struggle to access internships and other educational opportunities.

This working paper provides insights into how all teachers can provide linguistically and culturally responsive and equitable education for all students by orchestrating instruction to meet their varying socioemotional, cultural, linguistic and academic needs. Grounded in social justice, the Cultural, Linguistic, Equity, and Responsiveness (CLEAR) paradigm presented in this paper describes a guiding framework for educators who wish to integrate sociocultural and sociolinguistic responsiveness and critical pedagogical practices to achieve quality, equitable education for their students. This paradigm includes a set of key understandings, commitments, habits, and actions to answer the question: "What do all educators need to know and be able to do to provide quality, equitable education for multilingual learners?"

This document summarizes a review of research, evaluation, resources, and stakeholder knowledge related to the topic of translation services for schools and districts. Databases used for conducting this review included Google Scholar and ERIC. Literature from peer-reviewed, scholarly journals was reviewed (noted with an asterisk), along with reports on translation services from reputable institutions. This review also includes information on specific translation services as well as information from trustworthy organizations on best practices for communicating with multilingual families. The search also resulted in translation and communication guidelines and plans for various states and districts. Overall, findings of this review suggest that translation services, when used appropriately and when accompanied with professional development and support, can help schools effectively communicate with all families.

This study introduces a new approach to measure effectiveness of teacher preparation programs at U.S. universities (TPP) by examining to what extent TPPs produce employable teacher candidates. We use teacher application data in Wisconsin public schools from 2014-15 through 2016-17. We find that attending a specific university's TPP makes a difference for novice teacher applicants' job outcomes. However, the competitiveness of a TPP is inextricable from the geographic locale in which it operates. These findings call into question the validity of a contextual and absolute TPP rankings. Our results suggest that graduates of TPPs with strong school and community partnerships are more competitive in the local labor market.