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In recent years, American universities have implemented many innovative strategies to enhance the academic success of students, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds. Yet first-generation and/or low-income (FLI) college students continue to encounter barriers to success because they do not have authentic access to digital technology needed to graduate and be career-ready in our rapidly changing economy. This paper analyzes the current state of digital inequity among FLI students at Stanford University. It also reviews existing programs to address digital inequity at California State University, Fresno (Fresno State), the University of Michigan and Bowdoin College and provides guidance on developing a device program. Finally, the paper recommends strategies to better understand digital inequity and to address it in a sustainable way.

Policymakers and educational leaders across state and federal agencies have invested considerable effort in identifying how schools can both mitigate and exacerbate student absenteeism. Despite extensive research into school-level characteristics and programs, there remains a notable gap in understanding the impact of classroom-level factors on absenteeism. This study investigates how classmates' absences impact student absenteeism in four Texas school districts, analyzing both in-person and virtual contexts. Using a novel approach that accounts for day-to-day attendance variation, findings indicate that in-person absenteeism among peers significantly increases a student's absenteeism, with effects lasting up to three days, regardless of achievement levels. However, virtual absenteeism showed no similar impact, highlighting distinct absenteeism dynamics in virtual environments. Amid COVID-19 disruptions, this underscores the need for interventions addressing absenteeism across varied learning settings, offering insights for policymakers and educators in navigating the challenges of both physical and virtual classroom dynamics.

This paper describes high quality teaching practices in two schools that produce exceptional growth for all kinds of students. These practices focus on making the most of instructional time and exposing students to high quality content in a variety of contexts. They prove teachers don't need to choose between differentiating to meet students' needs and giving them access to grade-level learning.

This qualitative study examines the information collected about applicants to mathematics or science teacher preparation programs (MSTPPs) and how university faculty perceive and value this information in admissions decisions. Based on document review and interviews with MSTPP faculty and admissions directors, we found that broad measures of mathematics and science content background (e.g., achievement test scores, past mathematics and science courses taken) were used more frequently than information on applicants' specific mathematics and science content knowledge and dispositions. In many cases, application components (such as interviews and personal essay statements) were perceived by faculty to be conducive to surfacing applicants' content knowledge and dispositions; however, they were not constructed or employed in a way that afforded the obtainment of this information. We highlight salient examples of MSTPPs' collection and use of information related to mathematics and science and discuss implications for TPP admissions processes.

Transnational joint education provision -- education jointly developed and delivered by two or more institutions in different countries -- has emerged as a desired experience for many students, a key priority of several institutions, and a site of innovation. The strategic importance of this topic on a European level is one of the reasons it was selected for the 2023 EUA Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Group entitled "Challenges and enablers in designing transnational joint education provision". The group's findings are compiled in this report, which outlines the group's conceptual understanding of the term, benefits and challenges of engaging in transnational joint education provision, and recommendations geared towards higher education leadership, staff members, as well as national and regional-level governments.

European higher education institutions (HEIs) are facing increasing demands for more flexible learning and flexibility in learning paths. This report from a 2023 European University Association Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Group on "Flexible learning and teaching" explores the complexity of implementing flexible learning at HEIs, starting by defining what it means and entails for the institution, and its members and entities (staff, students, leadership, faculties). With the view that the development of flexible learning is an essential condition for the future of learning at universities, the group identified challenges and examples of practice, and offered recommendations for institutions to reflect on their strategy and build capacity for flexible learning.

"Papel y lápiz" (Paper and pencil) is the result of a qualitative research project carried out using the Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a model. "Papel y lapiz" seeks to teach young people and children, who are identified as being at high social risk, in 35 different public educational institutions (PEIs) from Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. The principle aim of the project will be educating them about the importance of knowing and understanding the often-harsh realities of their social situations with particular focus on the social risks each of them might encounter. "Papel y lapiz" also aims to teach students about the social situation of their city using media and specifically the press. Working alongside Educommunication, the aim is to start educating the young people in school classrooms, in other words the most formative years of their youth. Between 2019 and 2022 this research project has reached 712 students from various public Educational Institutions (EIs) in Cartagena. The project was materialized in collaboration with teachers and directors by creating 6 educational cards that incorporate the use of the press to analyze some of the most critical issues the city is facing. [For the full proceedings, see ED654100.]

Intersectionality highlights that different aspects of individuals' identities are not independent of each other. Instead, they interact to create unique identities and experiences, which cannot be understood by analysing each identity dimension separately or in isolation from their social and historical contexts. Intersectional approaches in this way question the common classification of individuals into groups (male vs. female, immigrant vs. native etc.), which raises important implications for the policy-making process. In education, analyses with an intersectional lens have the potential to lead to better tailored and more effective policies and interventions related to participation, learning outcomes, students' attitudes towards the future, identification of needs, and socio-emotional well-being. Consequently, as elaborated in this paper, some countries have adjusted their policies in the areas of governance, resourcing, developing capacity, promoting school-level interventions and monitoring, to account for intersectionality. Gaps and challenges related to intersectional approaches are also highlighted.

Student-teacher relationships are at the core of student experiences in schools and, arguably, fundamental to influencing student outcomes. Using a statewide, student-level school climate survey from Massachusetts, we investigate teachers' contributions to school climate, which we refer to as climate value added (VA), and how it varies by student race/ethnicity. We first show that climate VA contributes to student learning: Teachers whose students report positive feelings about climate also contribute more to student test scores and to an aggregate of nontest student outcomes (student absences, suspensions, and grade progression). And teachers identified by students of color as contributing to better school climate have outsize effects on learning gains for these students. Differences in teachers' climate effects across racial/ethnic groups are largest on topics aligned with cultural competency, school participation, and comfort with faculty. Lastly, we find that Black students assigned to Black teachers report better school climate than Black students assigned to other teachers.

Most military veterans who reside in a central U.S. city have not entirely used their Montgomery G.I. Bill (MGIB) education benefits to advance their careers. There is limited research on veterans' views of the effect of certain barriers, identified from prior research, on academic persistence. The problem of the lack of specific information about the barriers that prevent military veterans residing in a central U.S. city, from fully using the benefits of the MGIB, was addressed in this study. Clark and Caffarella's transition theory was used in this case study to explore the perceptions of eight military veterans on reason they dropped out of college or never used the MGIB to attend college. The research questions focused on military veterans' views of strengths and weaknesses of the G.I. Bill while they were in active duty, at the time they made the decision to not use it or respectively how the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs processed their eligibility. Thematic analysis findings from the data collected with face-to-face semi-structured interviews revealed five themes that described military veterans' views of the barriers they faced during their duty from their supervisors, perceptions of the MGIB during active duty, applying for college, having a family prevented the use of the benefits, expired MGIB benefits, and having a job that prevented the use of the MGIB. The resulting project consisted of a white paper that proposed recommendations of how military veterans could successfully improve their academic progress towards earning a college degree. The project contributes to positive social change by informing future military recruits, active-duty military personnel, military veterans, and military veteran organizations of potential strategies to help military veterans effectively use the MGIB benefits to earn a college degree.

This report summarises the findings of the EUA Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Group "Needs and wellbeing of students and staff", which was active throughout 2022. It outlines aspects of a higher education institution's activities which the group identified as having the most influence on individual wellbeing. The group conducted student and staff surveys at group member institutions to enquire about these aspects, and whether they were positively or negatively affected by digital learning and teaching. In addition, the group organised a student focus group to obtain further insights into student views on wellbeing and the support institutions can provide. The results of these activities are summarised in the report, which concludes by outlining challenges, key considerations and recommendations, which institutions may find helpful for ensuring targeted and effective support for their students and staff. The group was organised in the context of the "Supporting European universities in their strategic approaches to digital learning" (DIGI-HE) project and EUA's Learning & Teaching activities.

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 concept of education for sustainable development (ESD) has emerged as one of the important educational themes in the past two decades. Advocates of ESD believe that ESD can lead to socio-economic and environmental justice. However, there is lack of research on the influence of teacher education programme on student teachers' conceptions of ESD and their future commitment for ESD. This timely, international research aimed at understanding student teachers' conceptions of ESD, emphasis on ESD in teacher education programmes as perceived by student teachers, the importance the student teachers perceive of sustainable development as part of their future teaching, and the ways they intend to engage with ESD in future. [This report was funded by the UCL Global Engagement Fund.]

We examine the literature linking private and charter schooling to perceptions of student safety in United States schools. The results are generally null to positive for student, parent, and principal reports of school safety for the eight studies on safety in public charter schools and the eleven studies on safety in private schools. None of the existing studies find evidence to suggest that private or charter schools reduce perceptions of school safety overall. Although more research is needed, the most rigorous evidence on this topic suggests that private and public charter schools are generally associated with higher levels of safety as reported by students, parents, and principals.

There are increasing calls for the UCAS personal statement to be reformed. These calls are based on the claim that the current personal statement gives unfair advantages to more privileged applicants within higher education admissions. While this topic has attracted political attention, there is much about the personal statement that remains unknown. Of the evidence that does exist, it suggests that applicants from under-represented backgrounds face larger challenges with their personal statements, and that this results in fewer offers from more selective higher education providers. However, there has been less attention on understanding applicants' perspectives and the specific challenges they face in writing their UCAS personal statement. This report offers two new pieces of evidence to address this gap: (1) By analysing 164 personal statement drafts from 83 applicants from under-represented backgrounds, this report outlines the challenges applicants face when writing a UCAS personal statement. Particular challenges were found on including an appropriate academic discussion, with 83 per cent of drafts failing to supply an evidence-based opinion about a topic in their subject area. Similarly, applicants struggled to organise their statement in an effective way, with 35 per cent of applicants struggling in at least one draft to write with cohesive paragraphs; and (2) Surveys and interviews with under-represented applicants. The applicants describe three main challenges in writing their statements: (a) the opening paragraph; (b) meeting the character limit; and (c) knowing what would impress the admissions tutors. Applicants tell of the large toll of the personal statement, with some spending 30 to 40 hours on it, which requires sacrifices in both their studies and their wider lives. Combining this new evidence and the existing literature, the report then assesses the case for reforming the UCAS personal statement by considering its compatibility with Universities UK and GuildHE's "Fair admissions code of practice." Four options for reform are considered, and it is argued that a series of short-response questions is most compatible with the "Fair admissions code of practice." To be compatible, these short-response questions should assess 'baseline' suitability for a course rather than being used to distinguish between applicants that demonstrate competencies above this. The report concludes with three example short-response questions, arguing that these have considerable potential to increase fairness in higher education admissions. [For the related policy note, see ED630778.]

To boost college graduation rates, policymakers often advocate for academic supports such as coaching or mentoring. Proactive and intensive coaching interventions are effective, but are costly and difficult to scale. We evaluate a relatively lower-cost group coaching program targeted at first-year college students placed on academic probation. Participants attend a workshop where coaches aim to normalize failure and improve self-confidence. Coaches also facilitate a process whereby participants reflect on their academic difficulties, devise solutions to address their challenges, and create an action plan. Participants then hold a one-time follow-up meeting with their coach or visit a campus resource. Using a difference-in-discontinuity design, we show that the program raises students' first-year GPA by 14.6 percent of a standard deviation, and decreases the probability of first-year dropout by 8.5 percentage points. Effects are concentrated among lower-income students who also experience a significant increase in the probability of graduating. Finally, using administrative data, we provide the first evidence that coaching/mentoring may have substantial long-run effects, as we document significant gains in lower-income students' earnings seven to nine years following entry to the university. Our findings indicate that targeted, group coaching can be an effective way to improve marginal students' academic and early career outcomes.

The Speak Up Research Project is a national initiative of Project Tomorrow, an internationally recognized education nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that all students are prepared to become tomorrow's leaders, innovators and engaged citizens of the world. Each year, the Speak Up Project polls K-12 students, parents, and educators about the role of technology for learning in and out of school. This year's national briefing paper examines the important topic of the peril vs. promise value proposition for digital learning through a three-part analysis of the authentic feedback collected from over 343,500 K-12 students, parents, teachers and administrators during the 2018-19 school year. year. Key findings shared in this paper include how students are using technology in school and out of school to support learning and the differences in how students and educators view the value proposition around digital learning. Additionally, three top concerns with digital learning today were examined -- parents' worries about too much screen time, teachers' effectiveness with using technology, and the Homework Gap as a representation of technology equity.

The Speak Up Research Project is a national initiative of Project Tomorrow, an internationally recognized education nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that all students are prepared to become tomorrow's leaders, innovators, and engaged citizens of the world. Each year, the Speak Up Project polls K-12 students, parents, and educators about the role of technology for learning in and out of school. This year's national briefing paper examines the important topic of the peril versus promise value proposition for digital learning through a three-part analysis of the authentic feedback collected from over 343,500 K-12 students, parents, teachers, and administrators during the 2018-19 school year. Key findings shared in this paper include how students are using technology in school and out of school to support learning and the differences in how students and educators view the value proposition around digital learning. Additionally, three top concerns with digital learning today were examined--parents' worries about too much screen time, teachers' effectiveness with using technology, and the Homework Gap as a representation of technology equity. [For "Digital Learning: Peril or Promise for Our K-12 Students. National Briefing Paper -- Speak Up 2018/19," a special preview release for community review and commentary, see ED605281.]

In low-income countries, private schools are perceived as superior alternatives to the public sector, often improving achievement at a fraction of the cost. It is unclear whether private schools are as effective in middle-income countries where the public sector has relatively more resources. To address this gap, this paper takes advantage of lottery-based admissions in first grade for a Mexico City private school that targets and subsidizes attendance for low-income children. Over three years, selected students via lottery scored 0.21 standard deviation higher than those not selected in literacy tests, corresponding to a normalized gain of one-half of a grade level every two years. Lottery winners also statistically outperformed those not selected in math, but the gains were more modest. Relative to the control group, parents of selected students were more satisfied with their school and had higher educational expectations for their children. Unlike findings from low-income countries, these gains came at increased cost--twice as much on a per pupil basis relative to public schools. Additional analyses indicate gains made by the lowest income students in the sample help explain the school's impact. This suggests private schools could bring down persistent achievement gaps in these countries, but puts into question the validity of implementation at scale. [This paper is a product of the Education Global Practice.]

As one of the world's fastest-growing economies, Bangladesh aims to become a middle-income country by 2021 and a high-income country by 2041. To attain these goals, the country must face global challenges head on by strengthening existing industries and preparing itself for industries that have yet to emerge. To do this, it must tap the full potential of its human capital. Although Bangladesh made strides in access to education during the Millennium Development Goals era, poor girls continue to fall behind despite their ambitions to lead the country to change--a gap that affects their work outcomes once they leave school. The skills that Bangladesh's youth need to thrive in a world of rapid technological advancement will require a response by policymakers and practitioners alike. This policy paper unveils the barriers to educational opportunities for rural girls in Bangladesh, focusing specifically on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. It reflects upon a survey of 500 rural secondary-level schoolgirls, 100 parents, and 75 teachers from 30 rural schools of the district of Gazipur. The study identified barriers to STEM education at three levels--individual, institutional, and societal--that revealed both systemic and socio-cultural issues that actors in policy and practice can tackle. It provides clear recommendations for action and examples of practices that have started to fill the gap globally. If Bangladesh is to accomplish its goals and tap the potential of all its youth for rapid development, breaking the barriers to STEM education for all children is a key place to start. [This report was co-authored with Amanda Braga.]

Teachers play a critical role in establishing classroom and school environments that contribute to students' social and emotional development. This paper explores whether we can estimate a classroom-level measure of student growth in SEL by applying value-added models to students' [social-emotional learning] SEL. We analyze data from the 2016 and 2017 administrations of student self-report surveys, which contain responses from roughly 40,000 students in Grade 5 within five of California's CORE Districts. We estimate separate value-added models for each of the four SEL constructs assessed--growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness--and for math and [English language arts] ELA academic growth. We find across-classroom-within-school variance of students' SEL outcomes, even after accounting for school-level variance. The magnitude of classroom-level impacts on students' growth in SEL appears similar to impacts on students' growth in ELA and math, although the growth models of SEL do not perform as well as growth models of academic outcomes. Results suggest that across-classroom-within-school impacts may be larger in magnitude than across-school impacts on students' SEL growth. Finally, we show that there are generally low correlations between classroom-level growth in SEL and classroom-level growth in ELA or math; however, growth mindset stands apart from the other three SEL constructs in that there is a moderately strong relationship. By assessing whether we can develop a sound approach for measuring classroom-level impacts on students' SEL, we aim to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about appropriate and innovative uses of data on students' non-cognitive and social-emotional learning. [For the policy brief, "Can We Measure Classroom Supports for Social-Emotional Learning?," see ED600449.]

Academic self-efficacy is a student's belief about their ability to learn or to perform within a school environment. This paper captures differential trends in academic self-efficacy by gender using self-efficacy survey data from five large districts in California from the 2014-15 through 2017-18 school years. We find that female students report significantly higher self-efficacy in elementary school compared to males. In middle school, students' self-efficacy declines for both genders; however, this drop is substantially greater for females, leading to significantly lower levels of reported self-efficacy for females than males from middle school onward. Despite large differences in average self-efficacy, this gendered pattern of drop-off occurs consistently across racial, socioeconomic, and academic subgroups. Average self-efficacy also varies significantly among schools; however, school demographics and culture and climate, as reported by students, are not strongly associated with the average female-male self-efficacy gap. Looking at how the general measure of academic self-efficacy corresponds with test scores, we find the drops in self-efficacy are most pronounced for low scoring students, and that changes in grade-to-grade test scores modestly correlate with changes in general academic self-efficacy.

The number of students opting out of standardized tests has grown in recent years. This phenomenon represents a potential threat to our ability to accurately measure student achievement for schools and districts. This working paper documents the extent to which opting out is observed in the CORE districts. It then models the extent to which various accountability measures would be impacted by growth in the rate of opting out. The growth of opting out could significantly impact some accountability measures in use in California, but the CORE growth measure is largely unaffected. In contrast, accountability metrics that track student achievement by cohort are at risk of becoming biased even with relatively low absolute levels of opting out, and districts should consider explicitly adjusting for the characteristics of the students that actually sit for tests when designing school accountability systems.

Existing research on self-management skills shows that measures of self-management predict student success. However, these conclusions are based on small samples or narrowly defined self-management measures. Using a rich longitudinal dataset of 221,840 fourth through seventh grade students, this paper describes self-management gaps across student groups, and confirms, at a large scale, the predictive power of self-management for achievement gains, even with unusually rich controls for students' background, previous achievement, and measures of other social-emotional skills. Self-management is a better predictor of student learning than are other measures of socio-emotional skills. Average growth in English language arts due to changing from a low to a high level of self-management is between 0.091 and 0.112 standard deviations, equivalent to almost 80 days of learning.

Internships are a widely touted co-curricular activity that may enhance students' employability, their future wages, and employer talent needs. However, how students themselves understand and conceptualize the internship experience is poorly understood. Reasons why understanding students' perceptions of internships is important include the fact that debates about employability are dominated by employer voices and interests, and that developing student-centered educational experiences require a deep understanding of their conceptions of the learning and developmental process itself. In this paper we adopt an ethnographic perspective to reposition the perspectives of students from the periphery to the center within discussions of employability and internships, and use the freelisting method to document the words or phrases that are most salient to students (n=57) as they consider the cultural domain of "internships." We analyzed the resulting data using saliency analysis, inductive thematic analysis, and techniques from social network analysis to document the most frequently and psychologically salient reported terms associated with internships, themes related to these terms, and differences between students who have and who have not taken an internship. Results indicate that the most salient terms in the cultural domain of internships were: "experience," "learning," "paid," and "connections." Students discussed these words in utilitarian terms (e.g., something to "get" for one's résumé), as important aspects of career- and self-exploration, and to highlight the importance of compensation. Differences in the complexity of student accounts were evident between students who had taken an internship and those who had not. These findings highlight how common definitions of internships reflect a homogenous and aspirational perspective that is inconsistent with student accounts. We conclude that students' insights about internships are important to consider to reframe the employability debate to include student interests, to avoid one-size-fits-all approaches to internship design, and to facilitate student self-reflection.

Education researchers use surveys widely. Yet, critics question respondents' ability to provide high-quality responses. As schools increasingly use student surveys to drive policymaking, respondents' (lack of) motivation to provide quality responses may threaten the wisdom of using surveys for data-based decision-making. To better understand student satisficing (suboptimal responding on surveys) and its impact on data quality, we examined the pervasiveness and impact of this practice on a large-scale social-emotional learning survey administered to 409,721 students in grades 2-12. Findings indicated that despite the prevalence of satisficing in our sample, its impact on data quality appeared more modest than anticipated. We conclude by providing an accessible approach for defining and calculating satisficing for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working with large-scale datasets.

Teacher collaboration is a key factor in improving instructional quality and promoting student achievement. Though research attests to the importance of school contextual elements for the work of teachers, few studies investigate how these factors interact to enable or constrain collaboration. This study examines teacher perspectives on collaborative practices by analyzing observations and interviews of teachers and other staff at eight Wisconsin elementary schools. It finds that structures for collaboration shape teacher participation in collaborative practices. The authors distinguish among three structures of collaboration--requisite, optional, and informal--and explore how relational trust among teachers and between teachers and their administrators and colleagues affects collaboration. They find that teachers who attested to the presence of relational trust within their schools collaborated with colleagues, regardless of formalized times to do so. Conversely, teachers who described a lack of relational trust opted against collaborating with grade-level colleagues, despite, in some instances, having access to collaborative planning time. Instructional approaches influenced collaborative structures and relational trust, as some teaching formats fostered contact between practitioners while others separated teachers. The study concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for extant and future research regarding collaboration in context.

In this study, we examine which student and school characteristics predict students' perceptions of the school climate. Our data come from a survey administered to nearly 3,000 students in grades 4-12 in 18 charter schools throughout the country. The survey asks students about their perceptions of seven distinct aspects of the school's culture and climate: cultural and linguistic competence, learning strategies, rigorous expectations, school safety, sense of belonging, student engagement, and teacher-student relationships. We find substantial "within"-school variation in student perceptions of the school climate, which is explained in part by differences in student race/ethnicity and grade level. This finding suggests that among our diverse sample of charter schools, school climate surveys may be better suited to capture group-level differences in student experiences within a school as opposed to school-level differences. Although there is far less variation in student perceptions of school climate "between" schools, school composition, as measured by the racial/ethnic diversity of the school, is a meaningful predictor of student perceptions of the school's cultural and linguistic competence, student engagement, and sense of belonging. While further analyses are needed, our findings suggest that schools with more diverse student bodies may be better able to foster positive student experiences.

IDEA's Teaching Essentials (TE) is a useful tool for gathering student feedback on how frequently an instructor exhibits each of seven behaviors that correlate most highly with student perceptions of course and teaching excellence. TE is appropriate for instructors who desire quick, sound student feedback on (a) displaying personal interest in students and their learning, (b) finding ways to help students answer their own questions, (c) demonstrating the importance and significance of the subject matter, (d) making it clear how each topic fit into the course, (e) explaining course material clearly and concisely, (f) introducing stimulating ideas about the subject, and (g) inspiring students to set and achieve goals which really challenge them. TE's survey items are based on Chickering and Gamson's "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" (1987), and they align with Hativa's (2014) essential dimensions of effective teaching. Thus the instrument enjoys both empirical and theoretical support.

This paper presents the first evidence of how students make career technical education (CTE) course-taking decisions. Among the universe of Michigan high-schoolers we find large disparities in CTE access and participation by gender, race, and income. We decompose participation gaps between supply (access) and demand (preferences) with a simple discrete choice model. We find that student preferences for CTE content drive participation gaps by gender, inequities in access drive gaps by income, and school-level supply and demand factors combine to create the gaps by race. Policy simulations highlight the importance of accessible CTE delivery models within comprehensive high schools.

Effective education at the tertiary level is one of the key conditions for the development of modern economies; it also has a substantial impact on social development. Nowadays, higher education institutions all over the world are facing numerous challenges, some of them global (e.g. funding), others local (e.g. demographic trends). Universities are seeking new ways of dealing with the challenges; however, they often resort to methods that seem to do more harm than good by moving the emphasis from long-term objectives to short-term ones. In marketing literature, a new concept of Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) is proposed as an alternative approach to traditional and outdated marketing theories applied to the higher education sector. Its foundational premise of value co-creation seems to be of particular relevance here as it assumes that various groups of actors jointly create the academic experience. This paper focuses on the higher education sector in Poland and investigates the attitudes of Polish students towards value co-creation and their consequences for the academic experience. The study leads to the identification of value co-creation styles among students reflected by five segments: Maximalists, Minimalists, the Scrupulous, the Networking-Oriented and the Intellectuals and presents their detailed characteristics.

Measures of school-level growth in student outcomes are common tools used to assess the impacts of schools. The vast majority of these measures are based on standardized tests, even though emerging evidence demonstrates the importance of social-emotional skills (SEL). This paper uses the first large-scale panel surveys of students on SEL to produce and evaluate school-level value-added measures by grade for growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness. We find substantive differences across schools in SEL growth, of magnitudes similar to those for academic achievement. This result suggests that schools might contribute to students' SEL. However, we also find that the models are not as well specified for SEL as they are for achievement gains, raising the possibility that the estimated school effects include school-level measurement error and potential omitted variables bias. In addition, the across-school variance in the average level of the SEL measures is proportionally much smaller than for academic measures, which would not be expected if substantial impacts of schools on SEL outcomes persisted over time. These findings recommend caution in interpreting measures as the causal impacts of schools on SEL, though they also do not rule out important school effects.

Improving the skill set of new teachers is a potentially important policy lever to increase student achievement. There are, however, doubts about the extent to which teacher education programs contribute to the development of teachers' skills. In this paper, we describe findings from an experiment designed to test whether one aspect of teacher education -- the assignment of teacher candidates to student teaching internships -- has a causal impact on the type of coaching they receive and their feelings of preparedness to teach. Specifically, we use administrative data on potential student teaching placements to predict those placements more likely to be promising, and then we randomly assign teacher candidates from one large program from Tennessee into either more promising (high index) or less promising (low index) internships. Based on data from a post-student teaching survey, we find consistently strong evidence of large effects of being assigned to high versus low index placements, particularly in terms of teacher candidates' perceptions of the quality of instruction of their cooperating teachers and the quantity and quality of the coaching that they received. And while not as large or consistently significant, we also found that teacher candidates in high versus low placements are more likely to report better working conditions in their placement schools, higher quality collaboration among teachers, more opportunities to learn to teach, and feeling better prepared to teach. Our findings provide evidence that teacher education can have a causal effect on the development of teacher candidates and it offers practical implications for programs and districts about how to use administrative data to inform internship placement decisions.

A valuable supplement to student evaluations of teaching (SETs) is the mid-semester feedback (MSF) technique, an intervention that can facilitate meaningful improvement of the teaching and learning experience. Scheduling time for an MSF enables a systematic, formative evaluation of instruction on a specific student population in a given semester. The authors introduce and provide an overview of the MSF, unpack the procedure step-by-step, share research on the MSF, and offer guidance for implementing several variations for instructors who find themselves short on resources and time.

This paper explores how teenage thinking about jobs and careers relates to adulthood labour market outcomes. The OECD working paper "Career Ready? How schools can better prepare young people for working life in the era of COVID-19" (ED613604) identifies career certainty, alignment and ambition as relevant indicators related to career thinking. This paper extends analysis of these indicators to new longitudinal datasets from Australia, Denmark, and Switzerland, and incorporates two new indicators, instrumental motivation and career concentration. The findings provide further evidence that teenage career ambition, certainty, alignment, instrumental motivation and broad occupational expectations relate to positive employment outcomes, including in periods of economic turbulence. However, this is not always the case and on some occasions, this association is found only in specific subgroups. Finally, the paper presents evidence from the academic literature, analysis of OECD PISA data and accounts from practitioners, which focus on ways in which schools can foster students' career thinking.