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CTE helps prepare young people for success in both postsecondary education and a range of high-wage, high-skill careers and is a critical engine for our economy. Right now, however, our nation is facing a serious shortage of CTE teachers that undermines quality and limits course access. This blog details how reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act creates a vehicle to address shortages and strengthen CTE offerings.
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Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia reported having shortages of special education teachers in the 2016–17 school year. As a result, school districts have filled those vacancies with underprepared teachers. Strategic investments in evidence-based programs can alleviate this perennial shortage. This blog highlights programs and state-level strategies to attract, prepare, and retain enough special education teachers to meet school and district needs.
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The Union Public Schools district in Tulsa, Oklahoma shows what can be achieved when a public school system takes the time to invest in a culture of high expectations, recruit top-flight professionals, and develop ties between schools and the community. From kindergarten through high school students get a state-of-the-art science education in a district where more than one third of the students are Latino, many of them English language learners, and 70% receive free or reduced-price lunch.
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Strategic selection and use of performance indicators can illuminate disparities in our schools and focus attention and resources on rectifying long-standing inequities. This report explores how states can use a multiple-measure accountability system to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for underserved youth and begin to dismantle the school-to-prison-pipeline.
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California’s State Board of Education has an opportunity to leave behind one of the most unfair and problematic features of No Child Left Behind (NCLB): the way it calculates English learners’ progress for purposes of accountability. In doing so, however, the state will still need to address how it will focus on, understand, and support the nearly 1.4 million public students classified as English learners.
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The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) includes a number of important requirements and opportunities to advance equity in U.S. education. A new report by the Learning Policy Institute, Equity and ESSA: Leveraging Educational Opportunity Through the Every Student Succeeds Act, outlines the equity implications of ESSA and discusses ways in which the federal government, states, districts, and schools can promote equity for underserved children and youth. The report was released in conjunction with a briefing on Capitol Hill.
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The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) represents an opportunity for states, districts, and schools to equitably design education systems to ensure that historically underserved students are prepared for the demands of the 21st century. This report details the equity implications of ESSA and provides recommendations for ways in which states, districts, and schools can leverage the new law to enhance equitable educational opportunities and close persistent achievement gaps.
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Community schools serve as a neighborhood hub, where both students and their families can receive medical, dental, and psychological services and other supports in partnership with local organizations. Research shows that such schools can have an outsized impact, including cutting the achievement gap and absentee rates.
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Renewing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was once considered a long shot, but in December 2015, the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law. Will federal regulators encourage states to take advantage of the new flexibility provided by ESSA to move teaching and learning purposefully into the 21st century? And will states assure these opportunities are made available to all students, rather than an elite few?
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While more than two-thirds of high school graduates enroll in college, nearly two-thirds of these students arrive on campus unprepared for college-level rigor. Instead of trying to solve this problem together, high schools and colleges typically operate in silos. The situation is entirely different in Long Beach, CA, where collaboration, from pre-k through college, is the watchword.
