Tools & Playbooks

July 27, 2023 | A review of reports on the teacher workforce and state agency documents covering the 2020-21 or 2021-22 school years found that, at a minimum, there were 314,134 teaching positions either left unfilled or filled by teachers not fully certified for the subject matter they were teaching.

July 27, 2023 | What does the data say about teacher working conditions in each state? This interactive map rates each state on how attractive and equitable the teaching workforce is compared to the national average. The tool also includes indicators of teacher supply and demand, such as teacher turnover and expected student population growth.

January 9, 2023 | The tool is designed to cost out the elements needed to establish a community school relative to a typical public school, guiding users through several steps to help them estimate costs. The tool was designed with input from national and local community school practitioners, researchers, and policymakers.

November 14, 2022 | Performance assessments provide students with authentic ways to demonstrate learning, cultivate academic knowledge and 21st-century skills, and prepare for college-level work. School, district, and network leaders should use quality criteria to examine their performance-based assessment policies and structures to foster deeper learning for all students.

May 25, 2022 | Because performance assessments surface examples of how students use their academic and nonacademic learning in authentic situations, they can help admission officers at higher education institutions more fully understand applicants. But a college’s abilities to effectively use reliable evidence of student learning in the admission process depends on how they frame the “ask” for these materials.

May 3, 2021 | The Partnership for the Future of Learning offers a set of strategies to recruit, prepare, develop, and retain high-quality teachers and bring greater racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity to the profession. This in-depth playbook includes examples of legislation and research-based policies, a guide to talking about teacher shortages and strengthening the profession, and publications for further reading.

March 9, 2021 | This collection of resources brings together recent and rigorous science to inform school COVID safety efforts, supporting pre-k–12 educators, administrators, and policymakers with evidence-based approaches to provide and sustain safe, in-person instruction for students.

December 29, 2020 | The Districts Advancing Racial Equity tool provides a practical and accessible resource for understanding, assessing, and advancing racial equity within school districts. The tool captures research-informed, high-leverage aspects of schooling that school leaders can use to create systems that build on the strengths of and respond to the needs of students of color.

December 5, 2019 | How are California school districts and counties impacted by the state’s persistent teacher shortages? An interactive map enables policymakers, advocates, parents, caregivers, and others to answer that question by exploring data in critical areas, such as the percentage of teachers on substandard credentials, the share of beginning teachers, and the rates of teacher turnover—a critical factor driving shortages.

September 5, 2018 | The use of multiple measures in statewide school accountability and improvement systems under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offers states, districts, and schools the chance to gather and respond to information that is meaningfully connected to student opportunity and success. As policymakers, educators, parents, community-based organizations, and other education stakeholders implement ESSA, they can use the information in this interactive tool to identify and target their efforts to ensure that students furthest from opportunity can graduate from high school fully prepared for college, career, and civic engagement.