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As states, districts, and schools are expanding instruction to include the competencies associated with college, career, and civic readiness, they are also developing ways to measure mastery of these deeper learning and higher-order thinking skills. These measures include performance assessments, such as portfolios, capstone projects, and senior defenses, alongside classroom performance. A new report looks at how these assessments are being used to inform college admission, placement, and advising decisions.
The Learning Policy Institute released Building an Early Learning System that Works: Next Steps for California at this forum. This new report complements LPI’s earlier report on early care and education (ECE), Understanding California’s Early Care and Education System, which provides a comprehensive overview of the state’s ECE system. The earlier report found that California’s ECE system is complex and fragmented, and fails to provide hundreds of thousands of children with the quality early learning experiences they need.
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The Trump administration’s focus on “school choice” has shined a spotlight on charter schools and private school vouchers as ways to improve education, but evidence shows that these strategies do not always result in stronger outcomes for children. Additionally, charters and vouchers are not the only “school choices” available. A new report from the Learning Policy Institute provides information on the range of school choices available and what factors shape their outcomes.
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Growing economic and racial inequality are impacting many children’s health and welfare, as well as educational and life success. To address these inequalities, policymakers increasingly look to community schools as an effective approach for supporting students and their families in neighborhoods facing concentrated poverty. A new study from the Learning Policy Institute finds that, when implemented well, these schools help students overcome such challenges, improving their educational outcomes by removing out-of-school barriers to learning.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides funding to meet the educational needs of low-achieving schoolchildren. A new landmark study finds that community schools are effective at improving educational outcomes for children in high poverty communities. Teachers College and Children's Aid hosted leading scholars, policy makers, and practitioners who discussed the future of community schools in New York City and New York State.
Linda Darling-HammondLeib SutcherDesiree Carver-Thomas
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Over the last three years, thousands of news stories and dozens of studies from LPI and other organizations have documented teacher shortages across the country. Yet some critics argue that turnover is not generally a problem and shortages may not even be real. In this blog, Linda Darling-Hammond, Leib Sutcher, and Desiree Carver Thomas break down the research and explain that solving turnover and shortages is not a pipedream; it’s a policy question.
This briefing highlighted community schools as an evidence-based approach for school improvement for education stakeholders to consider under ESSA. The Learning Policy Institute shared its findings and recommendations on community schools as a means to school improvement, based on a study it recently conducted with the National Education Policy Center.
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By Young Whan Choi | What should a high school student be able to do upon graduation? In this guest blog, Young Whan Choi, manager of performance assessments for the Oakland Unified School District, discusses how the use of a districtwide Graduate Capstone Project is an integral part of the district’s commitment to graduating all students prepared for college, career, and community.
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By Jiawen Wang | How are students impacted by teacher turnover and shortages? Oakland High School junior and guest blogger Jiawen Wang, a student leader with Californians for Justice (CFJ), discusses how she and her classmates experience these issues and why a strong and stable teacher workforce is key to creating relationship-centered schools.
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An effective, stable, and diverse workforce provides the critical foundation for the other building blocks of high-quality early childhood education programs. In this LPI Blog, Senior Researcher and Policy Analyst Beth Meloy outlines key elements of a high-quality system to achieve this goal, including improvements to teacher preparation and supports for ongoing professional development.
