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Use of the term Background knowledge, in conjunction with Reading Comprehension, has become convoluted and vague over the past several decades of research. Showing the abundance of uses of the term in multiple domains and disciplines has relegated it to being an automatic inclusion in key notes and conclusions of research on the topic of improving reading skills. This study aims to redefine Background Knowledge for clarity of thought in future investigations. Also, with data revealing national standard reading scores at an impasse for over forty years now, the redefined concept of Background Knowledge is offered as a starting point for use with new technologies that show great promise in the search for methods to improve reading for all students.

Following WWII, the English language became the global Lingua Franca, meaning that it is the primary language used to communicate between people who speak different languages. With the development of English as the Lingua Franca, Americans are generally less exposed to foreign languages than most other nationalities. Some researchers believe that this limited exposure to other languages contributes to Americans' lack of motivation to learn foreign languages. Within the current literature, there is additional debate over the importance of external and intrinsic factors in influencing motivation. This research study aims to determine how the rise of English as the Lingua franca (ELF) impacts American high school students' exposure to foreign languages and whether that exposure affects their motivation to learn other languages. The correlation between exposure and motivation was examined through a Mixed Method Study that collected foreign language students' and teachers' responses. While there was a correlation, it was not particularly strong, indicating that external factors play a role in motivation. However, outliers within the data suggest that intrinsic motivation also plays a large role; therefore, the reasons why students are motivated vary for each student, depending on why they are pursuing a foreign language.

The Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) conducts a student survey in the spring of each year to determine the level of student engagement in and out of the classroom. Students who actively participate in their learning process generally experience higher academic achievement (Wang & Hofkens, 2020). The survey contains items from the Student Engagement Instrument (Appleton et al., 2006), which measures students' level of engagement in school on five domains: Teacher-Student Relationships, Control and Relevance of School Work, Peer Support for Learning, Future Aspirations and Goals, and Family Support and Learning. Additional items to measure three other domains were added to include Rigor, Civic Engagement, and Creativity. The survey results from 2022-23 can be used to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses so schools can proactively determine whether the environment is meeting the needs of students (Huang, 2019). The purpose of this report is to highlight key district findings from the 2022-23 survey administration. A total of 33,643 eligible students in grades 5-12 (33.3%) from 188 schools completed the survey during the administration period. The report examines survey domains, presents item-level results by grade level, and concludes by exploring item-level results across various student groups. Overall, most students reported positive perceptions of their school experience, although middle school students had lower rates of agreement on four of the eight student engagement domains; Teacher-Student Relationships, Control and Relevance of School Work, Civic Engagement, and Creativity. Among all domains, the highest percent agreement was for Future Aspirations and Goals and Family Support and Learning, both of which were more than 90%. Analysis by student groups revealed that African-American students had lower percent agreement for approximately 25% of the items in the survey. Detailed results are summarized in the subsequent sections of this report.

This report details exploratory research undertaken by Newcastle University from November 2022 to May 2023. The aim of this exploratory project was to develop, trial and evaluate approaches to providing indications of how outdoor space is being perceived, used and valued by students in four schools -- to ascertain which approach (or approaches) may be best suited for use as part of Building in Use (BiU) reviews. The report details the three digital methods tested, as well as the enablers and barriers encountered while using them. The digital tools developed can be used individually to obtain limited data, but a combination of several methods is most and can be combined with information from the BiU site visit and staff survey in providing an overall BiU assessment. However, there are barriers to this including financial outlay, support from schools, and the time and effort required to create the data collection tools, even with the templates and prototypes that we detail in the report. We recommend initial discussions between the BiU technical adviser (TA) and school about tools, so that these can be chosen to fit with school procedures, especially relating to online access, and also fulfil particular needs of a specific BiU review. This would form part of a developed relationship between TA and school, beyond the existing one of schools accommodating data collection using pre-specified methods, which would also include feedback from the TA to the school.

"How Clear Is Their Path? Guided Career Pathways and Community College Students" explores how prepared community college students are to meet their career goals. Over 90 percent of students responding to the 2023 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) indicated they had chosen a career path. But many of those respondents were missing vital information about what that path would entail. This report contains data from 83,189 students across 199 community colleges who responded to CCSSE in spring 2023.

Several authors (Bowman & Denson, 2014; Gilbreath et al., 2011) have claimed that measures of fit between a student and the institution they are attending should be useful for institutional decision-making. These student-institution fit instruments were originally developed for research with specific student populations in one institution, but have not been assessed at other institutions. Institutional research offices rarely assess surveys or other instruments that are developed at one institution to determine whether those same instruments would provide results that are reliable and valid in different institutional contexts. The purpose of this study was to determine if the factor structure of a measure of student-institution fit would be appropriate to use at another institution. A survey that included a student-institution fit instrument developed by Gilbreath et al. (2011) was administered to a random sample of first-year students and new external transfers at a large, public university in the Midwest. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine if the underlying factor structure in the original instrument provides an appropriate fit for data obtained from a new sample. In addition, open-ended comments were collected to gain insight into students' interpretation of each item. The results suggested changes from the original scale to create a more robust measure. Specifically, Great Support Services was moved from the Social Environment fit to the Academic Environment fit, and covariances between multiple items were integrated. Similar methods could be used by institutional researchers at other institutions to gather data on students' interpretation of survey items, to evaluate the underlying factor structure of external instruments, and to create appropriate modifications to account for their own institutional contexts.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how triangulating responses from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) with information from the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) exposes data incongruency, specifically when considering the population of students with disabilities at 2-year institutions. Data from 503 CCSSE institutions were aggregated to calculate the average proportion of respondents who use services for students with disabilities, and then were compared to the percent of undergraduates who are formally registered with the institution's Office of Disability Services, as reported to IPEDS. Pearson correlation coefficients indicated statistically significant relationships, that are yet moderate in strength, between these measures of disability services use (0.274 < r < 0.331), compared to strong correlations of measures of gender, race, and enrollment (0.618 < r < 0.955). These effects indicate an incongruency between measures of disability, compared with other aspects of demography. Accounting for coverage of survey data using a multiple linear regression model did not improve convergence. These findings have implications both for institutional staff to triangulate their data to see if there is a need to review reporting procedures, and for higher education scholars who work with these data to understand the proportion of disabled students in the 2-year sector.

This publication provides a summary of the outcomes of apprentices and trainees aged 15 years or over who undertook an apprenticeship or traineeship during 2022. It includes those who completed an apprenticeship or traineeship (completers) and those who cancelled or withdrew (non-completers). The figures are derived from the 2023 National Student Outcomes Survey. Information is presented on apprentices' and trainees' reasons for training, reasons for non-completion, employment outcomes, further study outcomes and satisfaction with the apprenticeship or traineeship. An apprentice or trainee is a person who undertakes a contract of training with an employer and a training provider.

In 2022-2023, The RP Group surveyed over 7,000 African American/Black students across the California Community Colleges (CCC) system to further explore their transfer experiences. This report offers a selection of highlights from this comprehensive, statewide survey and specifically elevates findings related to the four core student experiences: gateway English and math completion, academic counseling, Umoja participation, and academic probation. The report begins by reviewing prior research by The RP Group that informs this current effort. Then, the authors describe the survey participants and summarize new insights from the students themselves on the four core student experiences. Student quotes from the open-ended questions in the survey appear throughout in callout boxes. The report concludes with recommendations to individuals working within the CCC system and beyond for how they can act on this information to better support transfer-motivated African American/Black students and ensure they make progress toward their educational goal: a bachelor's degree.

Over the past several years, content experts, psychometricians, and researchers have been hard at work developing, refining, and studying the digital SAT. The work is grounded in foundational best practices and advances in measurement and assessment design, with fairness for students informing all of the work done. This paper shares learnings from key research studies that have informed the design and development of the digital SAT and the current understanding of how well the assessment is working for its intended uses.

Corequisite remediation involves placing students who have been designated as underprepared directly into college-level courses with concurrent supports--such as in-class tutoring, online learning labs, or a supplemental class--rather than making them take non-credit-bearing developmental courses first. Despite the growing number of studies on corequisite remediation, there are still questions about which practices can address the needs of and advance equity for diverse groups of students, particularly students who struggle with basic math or English skills. CAPR researchers partnered with the Charles A. Dana Center to study and offer formative feedback about the implementation of corequisite course models at four colleges participating in the Corequisite Research Design Collaborative, the Dana Center's initiative for implementing equity-minded, holistic corequisite course models. CAPR researchers partnered with the Charles A. Dana Center to study and offer formative feedback about the implementation of corequisite course models at four colleges participating in the Corequisite Research Design Collaborative, the Dana Center's initiative for implementing equity-minded, holistic corequisite course models. This research brief and the supplement highlight the findings on the design and implementation of corequisite courses at the four colleges, as well as findings from a survey administered to students who were enrolled in these courses in fall 2021 and spring 2022. The researchers found that the implementation of corequisite support courses helped students understand course content and increased their engagement with their coursework. In general, students appeared more comfortable engaging in support courses than in the paired college-level courses. This suggests that support courses can play an important role in improving student engagement by providing an additional space for students to interact with the course content, their peers, and faculty. [This report was written with Ellen Wasserman. For the supplement, see ED631329.]

The Wake County Public School System's Student Engagement Survey is administered annually to measure students' perceptions of their learning experiences. This report is the first publication on student engagement results in the school system since 2018-19. Approximately 34,692 students from grades 5 through 12 responded in the spring of 2022 for a 34% response rate. The response rate decreased in the higher grades, dropping from 68.1% for grade 5 to 14.8% for grade 12. Due to low response rates for high school students, only grades 5 through 8 were included in this report. The general trend across survey domains is for percent agreement to remain stable or decrease with student grade level. Generally, percent agreement decreased slightly from pre-pandemic levels with a few exceptions. Details of the survey results are summarized in the report below. [For 2018-19 report, see ED606975.]

Over the past decade, California has revised its standards for teacher preparation and credentialing and invested in high-retention pathways for entering teaching. As part of its new accreditation system, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) administers surveys to program completers who apply for their preliminary teaching credentials. This analysis examines survey responses of almost 60,000 completers from 2016-17 to 2020-21. California has a growing and increasingly diverse pool of teacher preparation graduates, and more than 90% rated their programs positively. Clinical support and access to subject-area preparation are strong predictors of overall feelings of preparedness. Graduates of new preservice residencies and student teaching programs report feeling better prepared than those entering as interns or on emergency-style permits. However, access to higher-rated programs offering more clinical support varies, with half of Black and Native American candidates, as well as most special education candidates, entering without access to student teaching. [Report originally published March 2, 2023, last revised May 12, 2023. For the full report, see ED630345.]

High-quality teacher preparation is a critical building block of an effective and stable teacher workforce. In California, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) currently oversees teacher preparation programs (TPPs) at more than 100 institutions, and these programs graduate more than 10,000 teacher candidates per year. Over the past decade, California has considerably revised its statewide licensing and accreditation systems that set standards for teacher preparation and performance expectations for beginning teachers. These new teaching standards emphasize teachers' abilities to teach to the more ambitious student learning standards the state adopted in 2010. Given policy changes and financial investments, what is the state of teacher preparation in California? Based on survey responses from almost 60,000 completers of TPPs across California from 2016-17 to 2020-21, this report describes changes in the pool of newly credentialed teachers over this period of time, how well prepared completers of TPPs feel in different domains of practice, what kind of learning opportunities they encountered, what aspects of preparation explain how prepared completers feel to enter the profession, and how access to preparation experiences varies among different groups of teachers. This analysis also examines the extent to which perceptions of TPP completers align with survey responses from more than 5,000 cooperating teachers working with student teachers and more than 1,500 employers hiring these new teachers. This report begins by describing the landscape of teacher preparation in California. The authors then explain the data and methods used in this report and outline how the composition of the pool of newly credentialed teachers has changed between 2016-17 and 2020-21. They then detail the findings from the analysis of CTC surveys. These findings are organized into three sections: (1) overall perceptions of preparation effectiveness, (2) differences in perceptions of effectiveness by characteristics of preparation, and (3) differential access to highly rated preparation. The report concludes with policy considerations for California and implications for other states. [For the Research Brief, see ED630346.]

The Prospective Students Survey is one of the Graduate Management Admission Council's (GMAC) keystone research programs. The global graduate management education (GME) community has relied on data from this survey to gain insights about candidates' decision-making processes when considering and applying to graduate business schools since 2009. This year, the rich information gleaned from the Prospective Students Survey is being released in a nine-part series for easier consumption and improved user experience. The findings detailed in this overview report are based on responses from a total of 2,710 prospective students surveyed between January and December 2022 who represent those interested in various MBA and business master's program categories, including full-time MBA, professional MBA, executive MBA, master's in management and international management, and other specialized business master's programs. Responses used for analysis included candidates who are at different stages of the GME journey, including those who are actively applying to business schools or currently doing research about graduate business degrees. Descriptive analyses were conducted on survey responses to examine prospective students' program of study preferences, application plans, and preferred study destination. This overview report contains the following sections: (1) Graduate Management Education Decisions; (2) Program Choice; (3) School Selection Criteria; (4) Study Destination Considerations; and (5) Methodology. [Contributors of the report include: Quan Yuan, Alexandria Williams, and Kun Yuan.]

This Deans Summary highlights the key themes and insights of the GMAC Prospective Students Survey -- 2023 Summary Report. It continues to explore trends in the candidate pipeline, program preferences, and career goals as well as new questions added to this year's survey about first-generation candidates, motivations for pursuing GME, and social issues like sustainability and corporate social responsibility. [For the related report, "GMAC Prospective Students Survey. 2023 Summary Report," see ED630796. For the 2022 report, see ED623229.]

For more than a decade, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) Prospective Students Survey (PSS) has provided the world's graduate business schools with critical insights into the decision-making processes of people currently considering applying to a graduate management education (GME) program. Its questions--covering a diverse range of topics that impact prospective students' application and enrollment decisions--provide school professionals with timely, relevant, and reliable market intelligence to inform how they engage with candidates to build their incoming classes. This year's summary report, which considers data collected in the 2022 calendar year, continues to explore trends in the candidate pipeline, program preferences, and career goals. It also focuses on new questions added to this year's survey about first-generation candidates, motivations for pursuing GME, and social issues like sustainability and corporate social responsibility. The report then considers the longevity of trends in online and hybrid education and candidate mobility brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. [Contributors of the report include: Andrew Walker, Alexandria Williams, Nicola Rampino, Quan Yuan, Kun Yuan, and Sabrina White. For the related report, "GMAC Prospective Students Survey. 2023 Deans Summary," see ED630799. For the 2022 report, see ED623211.]

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the application that postsecondary students complete to receive federal grants, work-study, and loans; as well as some state and institutional grants, and private financial aid. In 2019-2020, 17.7 million undergraduates filed a FAFSA and in 2021-2022, full-time equivalent students received an average of $15,330 in financial aid. While the percentage of undergraduate students filing the FAFSA has increased significantly in the past twenty years, it is estimated that over one-third of non-filers in the 2015-2016 school year would have qualified for the Federal Pell Grant. This brief examines data from 59,208 students at 104 higher education institutions that participated in Trellis' Fall 2021 Student Financial Wellness Survey (SFWS). The report focuses on self-reported FAFSA completion and reasons for not completing the FAFSA. Research indicates a link between filing a FAFSA and within-year persistence, year-to-year persistence, and earning a degree within six years. Therefore, understanding students' FAFSA completion rate and reasons for non-submission can inform strategies to help students remain in school and graduate on time.

The California Community Colleges (CCC) Attendance Decisions Survey was designed to understand the factors influencing prospective and previously enrolled community college students' decisions to attend a California community college in fall 2022. This survey was administered in late summer/early fall 2022 and included responses from all 116 CCC by 75,497 previously enrolled and prospective (as of fall 2022) students. Key findings highlight students' increasing need to balance and navigate complex lives, including the need to work and care for dependents, as well as concerns about affordability. Students indicated they needed more flexible options (more course offerings and options such as online) financial and non-financial assistance (e.g., childcare) to help them better balance these competing priorities. In addition, there does seem to be a relationship between students' perceived value of education and their decision whether to attend/enroll in the college, whereby the less valuable they perceived a college education, the less likely they were to enroll or plan to enroll in fall 2022. As students are trying to navigate and balance their priorities, colleges may want to think about how best to emphasize the value propositions for attending college. There are three potential areas of opportunity related to recruitment, outreach, and retention efforts at the state and local levels: (1) Re-emphasize the value proposition for college to make workforce connections more explicit to help current and prospective students make informed decisions about the potential return on investment regarding their education; (2) Increase student-centered course scheduling options and resources to better support students' needs to balance school and personal/work responsibilities; and (3) Leverage state investments such as the California Virtual Campus to meet students' growing demand for and interest in online offerings and state appropriations for mental health and basic needs monies; connect students with these services to support their educational pursuits.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced most community colleges across the country to radically shift the ways in which they provided instruction to a majority of their students. Over the last three years, these institutions have learned how to better support students who take online courses. However they are continuing to investigate and understand how course modality impacts student learning and engagement will be invaluable in helping students reach their goals. This report highlights the differences in engagement between students who take all their classes online and those who take classes in person.

Corequisite remediation involves placing students who have been designated as underprepared directly into college-level courses with concurrent supports--such as in-class tutoring, online learning labs, or a supplemental class--rather than making them take non-credit-bearing developmental courses first. There are multiple corequisite course models; the Corequisite Research Design Collaborative (CRDC) colleges used a support corequisite model and an embedded corequisite model. The support corequisite model involved enrolling corequisite students in a college-level math or English course that also included students who placed out of developmental education; the corequisite students were also enrolled in a separate, supplementary support course that was offered before, after, or on different days than the college-level course. Students conceptualized these as two courses paired together. The support courses had smaller class sizes and they provided students additional time to become familiar with the content taught in their paired college-level courses. The embedded corequisite model involved enrolling the same group of students (or a cohort) in a college-level course and a developmental course that were taught back to back; this combination of courses is referred to as an "embedded course" in this supplement. Students conceptualized these back-to-back courses as a single course. During the fall 2021 and spring 2022 semesters, a student survey was distributed to every CRDC college except Houston Community College, which is located in Texas.2 The other three CRDC colleges--Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College (FDLTCC), St. Cloud Technical and Community College (SCTCC), and St. Cloud State University (SCSU)--are located in Minnesota. The survey was intended to evaluate students' experiences in their corequisite courses. [This report was written with Ellen Wasserman. For the full report, see ED631328.]

In 2021, the Association of American Universities formed an Advisory Board on Racial Equity in Higher Education. The board conducted its work through four different subgroups, each tasked with studying promising practices and communicating potential strategies to mitigate structural barriers to equity in different aspects of the life of leading research universities. These strategies touch on every aspect of work and life at research universities, ranging from student and faculty recruitment and retention, campus climate, university and departmental governance, and institutional aid to a host of other aspects of university business at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. To maintain the distinctive characters of respective campuses while concurrently contributing to collective outcomes, this report describes tools, techniques, and practices under each focus area around which the Advisory Board organized the work. It is expected that individual campuses will evaluate and adapt these resources to their unique environments.

This Information Capsule utilized National Student Clearinghouse and Senior Exit Survey data to report on postsecondary plans and college enrollment of Miami-Dade Public Schools' graduates who were part of the 2016-2017 cohort. M-DCPS' four-year graduation rate for students enrolled for the first time in the fall of 2017 was 47%. This rate was in line with the national rate in 2015, as reported in the latest publication from the National Student Clearinghouse.

Washington has made some strides in recent years toward increasing awareness and state support of students' basic needs but has lacked state and regional information to drive larger-scale policies, programs, and investments to address the attainment barriers associated with basic needs insecurity. State and regional data on unmet basic needs can help Washington more effectively tackle basic needs barriers to postsecondary attainment by: (1) increasing awareness of the true scale of basic needs insecurity, particularly in communities and education sectors where it may be "invisible" or counter to popular perception; (2) pointing to disparate impacts in particular student populations through the lenses of student status, race/ethnicity, veteran, or employment status, etc.; and (3) serving as an advocacy tool for data-driven solutions on campus, regional, and state levels. To address this information gap, in 2021 a statewide Basic Needs Data Work Group proposed a coordinated basic needs survey across Washington higher education institutions. The Washington Student Experience survey reported on here identified considerable levels of basic needs insecurity among college students across the state. In addition, the survey highlighted significant disparities for certain student groups, especially American Indian/Alaska Native students, Black/African-American students, low-income students, students with disability, students with dependents, and former foster youth. [The administration of the Washington Student Experience Survey and the development of this report were completed by staff at Western Washington University.]