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The United States retains many aspects of a healthy open society, but there are indicators of trouble and deep divisions around the meaning and importance of democratic values. This debate has significant repercussions for universities and their academic communities. In the most-simple terms, there is a red and blue state divide over the role and importance of public institutions, including universities -- red representing largely rural states in which most voters vote Republican and blue being majority Democratic voters, often with one of the two parties having majorities in their respective state legislatures. Then there are so-called purple states in which both parties are vying for dominance, but they are fewer in number. This brief discusses this contemporary dynamic and its implication for higher education and science policy.

Following up on an individual-level randomized controlled trial of a Dana Center Math Pathways (DCMP) model, this study assessed longer-term impacts on students' math completion, academic progress, and academic attainment. The version of the DCMP that was assessed in this study diversified the developmental and college-level math course content that students take, separating it into distinct pathways that better aligned with their career interests. It also streamlined developmental math sequences into a one-semester developmental course for all students, regardless of placement level, and implemented evidence-based curricula and pedagogy to engage students in active problem solving that was pertinent to real-life situations. The study, which followed 1,411 students from four Texas community colleges and ten campuses, found that, in the five years after random assignment, program group students were consistently more likely to successfully complete their first college-level math courses than control group students. The study did not find impacts after five years on the number of overall college credits that students accrued or on the likelihood that students attained a credential or transferred to a four-year college.

Although dual enrollment programming and interest in how that programming shapes students' college outcomes have expanded considerably in the past 20 years, policymakers, educational administrators, and practitioners do not have adequate information about which dual enrollment structural options are most effective. Using statewide administrative data in Texas on students who entered 9th grade in 2015 or 2016 and took at least one dual enrollment course through a community college, this paper examines dual enrollment course enrollments and outcomes among recent high school entrants. We describe dual enrollment coursetaking and dual enrollment course characteristics (including instructor affiliation, course location, and instructional modality) for traditional Texas public high school students (as opposed to those attending an Early College High School or charter school), illustrating how students participate in dual enrollment (e.g., the types of courses taken and when in their high school career students take these courses) and highlighting typical course characteristics. We then examine how dual enrollment course and instructor characteristics predict student course completion, course grades, and subsequent college enrollment. Our descriptive analyses illuminate striking differences between the demographic and academic backgrounds of students who take academic dual enrollment courses versus career and technical education dual enrollment courses, as well as variation in course characteristics across these two dual enrollment course types. Our regression analyses illustrate how several malleable dual enrollment course characteristics are associated with students' course outcomes and subsequent college enrollment. The relationships we identify offer insights for the design of dual enrollment courses and programs.

Anecdotal evidence points to the importance of school principals, but the limited existing research has neither provided consistent results nor indicated any set of essential characteristics of effective principals. This paper exploits extensive student-level panel data across six states to investigate both variations in principal performance and the relationship between effectiveness and key certification factors. While principal effectiveness varies widely across states, there is little indication that regulation of the background and training of principals yields consistently effective performance. Having prior teaching or management experience is not related to our estimates of principal value-added.

We use administrative panel data from seven states covering nearly 3 million students to document and explore variation in "academic mobility," a term we use to describe the extent to which students' ranks in the distribution of academic performance change during their public schooling careers. On average, we show that student ranks are highly persistent during elementary and secondary education--that is, academic mobility is limited in U.S. schools as a whole. Still, there is non-negligible variation in the degree of upward mobility across some student subgroups as well as individual school districts. On average, districts that exhibit the greatest upward academic mobility serve more socioeconomically advantaged populations and have higher value-added to student achievement.

A fundamental question for education policy is whether outcomes-based accountability including comprehensive educator evaluations and a closer relationship between effectiveness and compensation improves the quality of instruction and raises achievement. We use synthetic control methods to study the comprehensive teacher and principal evaluation and compensation systems introduced in the Dallas Independent School District (Dallas ISD) in 2013 for principals and 2015 for teachers. Under this far-reaching reform, educator evaluations that are used to support teacher growth and determine salary depend on a combination of supervisor evaluations, student achievement, and student or family survey responses. The reform replaced salary scales based on experience and educational attainment with those based on evaluation scores, a radical departure from decades of rigid salary schedules. The synthetic control estimates reveal positive and significant effects of the reforms on math and reading achievement that increase over time. From 2015 through 2019, the average achievement for the synthetic control district fluctuates narrowly between -0.27 s.d. and -0.3 s.d., while the Dallas ISD average increases steadily from -0.28 s.d. in 2015 to -0.08 s.d. in 2019, the final year of the sample. Though the increase for reading is roughly half as large, it is also highly significant. [This research was supported by grants from the CALDER Research Network.]

A wealth of literature shows positive outcomes and experiences from arts learning, yet youth access to arts education has become significantly more inequitable over the past 30 years. Alongside the growing discourse around arts learning and equity issues, there is a recognized and persistent need for more research. We conducted a critical, qualitative study of out-of-school time (OST) arts organizations across the United States. Our primary research questions were: (1) How do community youth arts organizational leaders, teaching artists, and participants describe the leading ideas and practices in OST youth arts programming? (2) How can OST youth arts work center the cultural, historical, and geographic resources that artists and arts organizations bring to arts programming? We first developed a theoretical framework for understanding arts practices in education and summarize key learning outcomes associated with youth participation in the arts. We then talked with OST arts education experts across the United States to understand how their programs support and center youth in arts learning, particularly Black youth, Indigenous youth, and youth of color (BIPOC youth), youth from low-income backgrounds, and LGBTQIA+ youth. This report offers the concept of "cultural-regional scenes" to describe the critical, qualitative case studies we developed of OST youth arts practice. We describe four unique cultural-regional scenes--the Urban Midwest, the Bay Area, Texas-Mexico Border Towns, and the Indigenous Southwest--and provide examples of youth arts practice in each scene. We conclude with ideas that stretch across scenes and suggest that researchers and practitioners can take up this approach in the study of OST youth arts programs. [Written in collaboration with community artists and artist-leaders across the United States and Indigenous Nations.]

Dual enrollment--in which students take college credit-bearing courses when still in high school--is becoming increasingly popular. Community college programs account for about 70% of the dual enrollment that more than one million high school students participate in each year nationwide. Yet dual enrollment can be a big financial burden for community colleges. In most parts of the country, community colleges receive less funding per dual enrollment student than they receive for their regular, non-dual-enrollment students. If community colleges are to continue to provide broad access to high-quality programs, they need to be able to sustain these programs. In this paper, we consider the economics of dual enrollment from the perspective of the community college. We illustrate how dual enrollment may not be financially sustainable in colleges and states where it is offered at a discount, but we also show how community colleges can structure their programs to be more efficient. To support our analysis, we describe case studies to show the conditions under which dual enrollment is affordable and efficient.

The recent turn toward core practices and practice-based teacher education has been accompanied by a growing literature on the definitions, pedagogies to teach, and assessments of core practices. Despite these developments, the field lacks core practices performance assessments designed to be used across course sections, courses, and subjects. This paper provides an existence proof of this type of assessment and investigates the affordances and constraints of the approach. The study describes three types of mixed-reality simulation-based performance tasks of three core practices. More than 400 novices in 64 teacher preparation programs in the United States reported that they were able to use the simulation environment and believed the tasks measure important teaching skills. Scores on the tasks were positively related to novices' prior academic and teacher education experiences. Implications for the formative use of such simulations are discussed.

This paper studies the causal impacts of public universities on the outcomes of their marginally admitted students. I use administrative admission records spanning all 35 public universities in Texas, which collectively enroll 10 percent of American public university students, to systematically identify and employ decentralized cutoffs in SAT/ACT scores that generate discontinuities in admission and enrollment. The typical marginally admitted student completes an additional year of education in the four-year sector, is 12 percentage points more likely to earn a bachelor's degree, and eventually earns 5-10 percent more than their marginally rejected but otherwise identical counterpart. Marginally admitted students pay no additional tuition costs thanks to offsetting grant aid; cost-benefit calculations show internal rates of return of 19-23 percent for the marginal students themselves, 10-12 percent for society (which must pay for the additional education), and 3-4 percent for the government budget. Finally, I develop a method to disentangle separate effects for students on the extensive margin of the four-year sector versus those who would fall back to another four-year school if rejected. Substantially larger extensive margin effects drive the results.

At least 38 states have created service areas or "districts" for each of their community colleges. However, little is known about the geographic boundaries of community college districts, the political process that defines them, and how they relate to institutional racial segregation. Given this dearth of knowledge, we studied nearly 150 state policy documents nationally and the actual district boundaries of Texas community colleges in order to investigate the larger political process of determining boundaries and whether gerrymandering is present. We found significant variation across the United States, including in who determines the boundaries and whether the districts have associated tuition reductions. In our case study, we also found evidence that at least some of Texas's community college districts may exhibit evidence of gerrymandering.

There is empirical evidence of substantial heterogeneity in economic mobility across geographic areas and the efficacy of schools has been suggested as an explanatory factor. Using administrative microdata from seven states covering nearly 3 million students, we explore the potential role of schools in promoting economic mobility by estimating cross-district variation in "academic mobility"--a term we use to describe the extent to which students' ranks in the distribution of academic performance change during their schooling careers. We show that there exists considerable heterogeneity in academic mobility across school districts. However, after aggregating our district-level measures of academic mobility to the commuting-zone level and merging them with geographically matched external estimates of economic mobility, we find little scope for geographic differences in academic mobility to meaningfully account for differences in economic mobility.

Educational inequality due to family socioeconomic status (SES) has been the focus of both public dialogue and education research in the United States for many years. The current study aims to understand how educational inequality due to family SES has changed in the United States. Specifically, the study focuses on the changes in achievement gaps between high and low SES students between 2003 and 2017 and the changes in the performance of low-SES students over time. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) grade 8 mathematics assessment were used for the analyses. Results show that the SES achievement gap at the national level has remained the same over time. State-level results suggest that 34 of the 50 states' SES achievement gaps experienced no significant change between 2003 and 2017, 14 gaps widened, and only two SES gaps narrowed. In addition, at the national level, more low-SES students achieved at the NAEP Basic and at the NAEP Proficient levels over time with a majority of states improving their low-SES students' performance. In conclusion, the study contributes to the existing literature not only by reflecting on U.S. national trends using an effective SES index, but also by providing state-level results. It also collects trend data on states' macro-level indicators, including economic growth, social inequality, and educational expenditures, allowing state-specific findings to be presented in the context of changes in macro-level context. Initial explorations of relationships between state SES achievement gap trends and macroeconomic factors are presented to motivate future research. The trends in SES achievement gaps and the specific policy contexts are presented in greater detail for 13 states/jurisdictions.

In the United States, the prevailing high school mathematics course sequence begins with a year of Algebra I, followed by a year of geometry and a year of Algebra II. Educators and others have raised concerns about the extent to which this sequence, which prioritizes the mastery of algebra, is appropriate for the longer-term education and career goals of students who do not intend to pursue STEM degrees in college. These concerns have impelled educators and policymakers to reexamine the prominence of algebra in high school mathematics curricula and to consider new approaches that provide students with more mathematics course options better aligned with their academic and career goals. In this paper, we explore existing approaches to high school mathematics curricula as well as new developments in the field. To start, we discuss a range of high school mathematics course sequences that are currently offered across the country and look at some of the systemic challenges embedded within the traditional paradigm. Then we explore federal and state changes to the provision of high school mathematics in the early 21st century, which we follow with a look at the influence of postsecondary institutions on high school math curricula. We then introduce short case studies of innovative high school math reforms that are occurring in five states. We conclude the paper by considering the Charles A. Dana Center's new initiative, Launch Years, and how this project works to reimagine high school mathematics and its relationship to postsecondary education and careers.

This paper is the first to investigate the costs of institution-wide reforms at community colleges. Drawing on data from 12 community colleges implementing comprehensive guided pathways reforms, I use the ingredients method to analyze the resources required to implement such reforms and examine their feasibility and affordability, as well as their value for students. For a typical college with 4,000 full-time equivalent students (FTEs) that implements guided pathways over four years, the total implementation cost beyond business-as-usual operations is estimated at $450 per student each year, or $7.1 million in total, which amounts to 12% of the college's annual budget, or approximately 3% per year. Around one third of this cost is for enhanced student advisement. Extra investments in information technology are also significant. Ongoing operating costs, primarily for student advisement and student success courses, are around $350 per FTE each year. Cost estimates vary depending on how colleges implement guided pathways, but the results are robust to alternative input prices and college characteristics. There is also some evidence of economies of scale. To finance guided pathways, colleges relied mainly on resource reallocation and efficiency gains, extra public funding, and external grants and funds. Increases in tuition/fees were modest, temporary, or delayed until after implementation; increases of just under 1% per year would suffice to support guided pathways reforms. From the student perspective, guided pathways increases the affordability and value for money of community college. With enhanced advising, students take fewer unnecessary courses. Program mapping leads students to take the right courses both at the community college and at any transfer college. Improved advising help students access grants and in-kind services; they also assist with financial plans to pay for college. Overall, the savings these reforms allow for are likely to exceed the modest increase in tuition/fees from guided pathways. [For the companion paper "Funding Guided Pathways: A Guide for Community College Leaders. Report," see ED609234.]

Although many programs remotely disseminate information to students about the college application process, there is little evidence as to how students experience these programs. This paper examines a large-scale remote counseling program in which college counselors initiated interactions with 15,000 high school seniors via text message to support them through the college application process. Given the passive nature of text messaging, not all of the counselors' prompts elicited similar responses from students. I use text-as-data methods (combining qualitative coding and supervised machine learning) to measure which interactions lead to productive engagement between counselors and students, and which do not. I show that interactions about financial aid offers and financial aid applications are much more likely to generate productive engagement than interactions about college lists. This finding may help to explain why recent remote counseling interventions that have sought to influence students' college lists have been ineffective.

Formal leadership development programs enhance what students learn in the classroom by giving them powerful tools for personal and professional success. They are also a differentiator for many institutions. They help schools attract more high-ability students, distinguish themselves from peer institutions, and increase the value of a student's education. Leadership development helps students strengthen their communication and collaboration skills, develop resilience, become more adaptable, and prepare for a world in which they will be expected to be agile and innovative. This paper lays out five key practices for high-impact leadership development: (1) A proven leadership model and development framework; (2) Formative evaluation of students; (3) Relevant, meaningful leadership experiences; (4) Impactful coaching; and (5) Tools and methods that provide a rich, engaging experience. Student leadership development programs that include these 5 elements are much more likely to be successful in nurturing individual growth, improving post-graduation opportunities, and increasing student and alumni engagement with the university.

Selective college admissions are fundamentally a question of tradeoffs: Given capacity, admitting one student means rejecting another. Research to date has generally estimated average effects of college selectivity and has been unable to distinguish between the effects on students gaining access and on those losing access under alternative admissions policies. We use the introduction of the Top Ten Percent rule and administrative data from the State of Texas to estimate the effect of access to a selective college on student graduation and earnings outcomes. We estimate separate effects on two groups of students. The first--highly ranked students at schools which previously sent few students to the flagship university--gain access due to the policy; the second--students outside the top tier at traditional "feeder" high schools--tend to lose access. We find that students in the first group see increases in college enrollment and graduation with some evidence of positive earnings gains 7-9 years after college. In contrast, students in the second group attend less selective colleges but do not see declines in overall college enrollment, graduation, or earnings. The Top Ten Percent rule, introduced for equity reasons, thus also seems to have improved efficiency. [This research was originally published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (see ED604542). Funding was provided by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence Scheme, FAIR project No 262675.]

This white paper presents a selection of model schools who all have, to some degree, fostered deeper learning. Schools were selected by internet search, or through references in "deeper learning" reports and documents. It should be noted that information in these reviews is based on information from school web-sites, in some cases the web sites of state education agencies, media reports and ratings, such as those published by "US News and World Report" or "Newsweek." It is hoped that this paper will serve as a resource directory of sorts, giving interested parties the opportunity to read more widely about these schools, consult the referenced documents, or to contact the schools directly. [For "Innovation and Deeper Learning: Volume 2," see ED604592.]

Sixty-seven school finance reforms (SFRs) in 26 states have taken place since 1990; however, there is little empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of SFR effects. We provide a comprehensive description of how individual reforms affected resource allocation to low- and high-income districts within states, including both financial and non-financial outcomes. After summarizing the heterogeneity of individual SFR impacts, we then examine its correlates, identifying both policy and legislative/political factors. Taken together, this research aims to provide a rich description of variation in states' responses to SFRs, as well as explanation of this heterogeneity as it relates to contextual factors.

Community colleges are a large sector of postsecondary education. In 2016-2017, the United States had nearly 1,000 public 2-year postsecondary institutions (community colleges), serving almost nine million students, representing 39% of all undergraduates. The majority of entering community college students require developmental (or remedial) math. Success rates in the developmental math course sequence and college more broadly are discouragingly low. Policymakers, practitioners, and researchers alike are eagerly searching for reforms to improve success rates, but there is a dearth of causal evidence on the effectiveness of most proposed reforms. We sought to answer the following question: What effect does a modularized, computer-assisted, self-paced approach to developmental math (compared with a more "traditional" direct-instruction course alternative) have on students' likelihood of completing the developmental math course sequence? Findings from a randomized controlled trial (n = 1,403) are presented. The program was well implemented; however, we did not find evidence that this approach was superior to the "traditional" math class. Although these results are disappointing, they are important because modularization and self-paced computer-assisted instruction are popular reforms.

Many first-time community college entrants aspire to earn a bachelor's degree, but few do. To transfer, students often must overcome information constraints to navigate bureaucratic hurdles and conflicting requirements. For a sample of 20 Texas community colleges, we reviewed college websites, assessing the ease of access and usefulness of online transfer information, and spoke to key transfer personnel about the information provided to students. We used a qualitative case study approach to triangulate findings from our data sources. Approximately two thirds of colleges in the sample fell below the highest standard on our rubric for either ease of access or usefulness, indicating room for improvement at most institutions. Many personnel we interviewed recognized the strengths and limitations of their college's online information, though several were ambivalent regarding the need for improving online transfer information, arguing that the availability of online information alone is insufficient for successful transfer and not as important as face-to-face advising. Our research illustrates the need for colleges to develop and update their online information with care, determining which information students need to transfer (including transfer guides for partner programs/colleges), how students might search for that information, and ensuring that necessary transfer information is available and up-to-date. The framework provided by our rubric may guide institutions in the evaluation of their online transfer information.

UTeach is a well-known, university-based program designed to increase the number of high-quality science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers in the workforce. The UTeach program was originally developed by faculty at the University of Texas at Austin but has rapidly spread and is now available at 44 universities in 21 states; it is expected to produce more than 9,000 math and science teachers by 2020. Despite substantial investment and rapid program diffusion, there is little evidence to date about the effectiveness of UTeach graduates. Using administrative data from the state of Texas, we measure UTeach impacts on student test scores in math and science in middle schools and high schools. We find that students taught by UTeach teachers perform significantly better on end-of-grade tests in math and end-of-course tests in math and science by 5% to 12% of a standard deviation on the test, depending on grade and subject. The effect is larger for the founding site at the University of Texas at Austin than for replication UTeach sites, with estimated upper bounds of additional months of learning for students taught by UTeach Austin graduates of 4.0 months in high school math and 5.7 months in high school science. Controlling for the selectivity of the undergraduate institution appears to explain the differential between Austin and replication UTeach sites, but not the overall difference between UTeach and non-UTeach teachers. [Financial support was provided from the Institute of Education Sciences to Southwest Educational Development Corporation, an affiliate of American Institutes of Research.]

As postsecondary institutions increasingly integrate technology into developmental education, it becomes important to understand how technology is used in these programs, what challenges institutions have encountered relating to the technology, and what considerations institutional leaders take into account when deciding whether and how to integrate technology in developmental education. This study explores these questions drawing from semi-structured interviews with key personnel from 31 open-access two-year public colleges, 11 broad-access four-year public colleges, and 41 state-level organizations overseeing such colleges. We find that institutions are integrating a variety of instructional, course management, and student support technologies into developmental education. In doing so, institutions have encountered a number of challenges, particularly with regard to end-user difficulties with technology. We also find that evidence of effectiveness of technology for improving educational outcomes was considered by a number of organizations in our sample when making decisions about technology use in developmental education; however, other considerations--particularly those based on costs and resources--were also quite influential. Indeed, such economic considerations were described to us more often than evidence of effectiveness by respondents discussing reasons for using technology in developmental education.

Since 2012, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has maintained a statewide predictive analytics system providing schools with an early warning in middle grades of students at risk for not completing high school. DPI is considering extending and enhancing this system, known as the Dropout Early Warning System (DEWS). The proposed enhancements include better understanding how and why schools use a tool like DEWS, supports and training necessary to translate DEWS into school change, and extending DEWS into other domains such as college and career readiness. This paper identifies national models of predictive analytic systems in education, including a focus on the Early Warning Implementation Monitoring System (EWIMS) (National High School Center, 2013). The paper explores how such policies might succeed in achieving their goals (e.g., dropout prevention and reduction of predictive at-risk behaviors), ways that districts and schools can make the policies more successful, and how states and state agencies like DPI might strengthen the policies, thereby facilitating local success. The paper recommends that DPI consider: (1) fostering a network of schools for professional development and support of implementation of predictive analytics like DEWS and EWIMS; (2) developing modifications of predictive analytic indicators to measure short-term change and progress; (3) merging predictive analytics with findings of current research funded by the statewide longitudinal data system grant that will identify effective strategies for supporting students with different at-risk profiles; (4) soliciting schools for voluntary implementation of the full DEW/EWIMS model; and (5) sponsoring research on existing practices of how schools identify and intervene on behalf of at-risk students. The analysis and recommendations of the paper should not be considered as final but rather as material for further discussion and deliberation--in essence as food for thought and inquiry. The paper is organized as follows. First is a description of the details of DEWS as an example of implementation of a predictive analytics tool. Second is a logic model of the policy, which is the theory of change underlying its intended positive effects on outcomes. Third, beginning an initial assessment of the theory of change tracing the policy from schools and students, is an analysis of the strength of predictive analytic policies, using a framework developed by Porter, Floden, Freeman, Schmidt, & Schwille (1988). Fourth, following the logic model to the school level, is an analysis of the characteristics of organization and process required for successful implementation in schools, using a framework developed by Gamoran and colleagues (2003). Finally, the paper turns to the question of how outside agencies might enable successful implementation of predictive analytics, with a description of the results of a study of how three school districts supported use of college readiness indicators, followed by a discussion of how DPI might strengthen its own policies.

Higher levels of civic and community engagement in higher education are positively associated with students' academic performance and they also build upon citizenship skills such as informed voting. Yet, while these are worthy and important outcomes of higher education, students from disadvantaged backgrounds can have more difficulty navigating civic engagement. Focusing on students at thirteen major public universities in the United States, and utilizing survey data generated by the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium, this study suggest social perspective-taking has a significant positive effect on all students' probability of voting and participating in community service. Students who were asked to identify challenge/solutions to social problems and reflect/act on community issues in the classroom were also more likely to participate in community service. Additionally, Hispanic students and students from lower-income households are significantly less likely to vote and perform community service--findings corroborated by previous research. Females are more likely to vote and participate in community service--findings also corroborated by prior research. Hispanic students and students from low-income backgrounds were more likely to participate in voting and community service if they had increased rates of social perspective-taking. These results suggest that increased opportunities to connect with classmates in the classroom and develop perspective-taking skills (e.g. appreciating the world from someone else's perspective, acknowledging personal differences, interacting with someone with views that are different from your own, and discussing and navigating controversial issues) are potentially quite powerful ways to foster civic engagement among students who traditionally have the lowest civic engagement rates compared to their peers.

Hispanic high school graduates have lower college completion rates than academically similar white students. As Hispanic students have been theorized to be more constrained in the college search and selection process, one potential policy lever is to increase the set of colleges to which these students apply and attend. In this paper, we investigate the impacts of the College Board's National Hispanic Recognition Program (NHRP), which recognizes the highest scoring 11th grade Hispanic students on the PSAT/NMSQT, as a mechanism of improving college choice and completion. The program not only informs students about their relative ability, but it also enables colleges to identify, recruit and offer enrollment incentives. Overall, we find that the program has strong effects on college attendance patterns, shifting students from two-year to four-year institutions, as well as to colleges that are out of state and public flagships, all areas where Hispanic attendance has lagged. NHRP shifts the geographic distribution of where students earn their degree, and increases overall bachelor's completion among Hispanic students who traditionally have had lower rates of success. These results demonstrate that college outreach can have significant impacts on the enrollment choices of Hispanic students. College outreach may also serve as an important policy lever for colleges or states looking to draw academically talented students.

Employers increasingly reach job seekers through online job postings, particularly for jobs requiring a higher education qualification. Job postings available online provide a rich source of real-time and detailed data on the qualifications and skills sought by employers across industries, occupations and locations. Using a sample of over 9 million job postings in four US states (Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington), this paper explores three questions. How does employer demand for graduate skills vary geographically, within and among occupations? For graduates in a general study field without a dedicated career vocational pathway, like sociology, what occupational clusters show evidence of employer demand, and what skills are sought? Given the high demand in the field of information and communications technology (ICT), are employers looking for ICT specialists open to hiring graduates from study fields other than ICT? We find evidence of variation in occupational demand, and to some extent in skill demand, within occupational clusters across the four states. We identify three occupational clusters where sociology graduates are in most demand, with distinct skill profiles. We also find that, when filling ICT positions, a notable share of employers considers recruiting graduates from other fields of study while requiring those graduates have the right technical transferable skills. Job posting data, we conclude, hold promise to complement existing labour market information systems and aid educators and policy makers in aligning labour demand and educational offerings. If analysed and disseminated effectively, such data could also assist students and workers in making learning and career decisions, for instance by identifying opportunities to build their own non-traditional path into high-demand, high-paying ICT occupations.

Many organizations use dashboards to monitor and analyze important performance measures. Data dashboards present the most important information (sometimes called key performance indicators, or KPIs) about processes and outcomes in a concise, easy-to-digest format. Dashboards get their name from the clusters of instruments and gauges drivers use to monitor the behavior of their cars. As educational organizations invest in more comprehensive human capital management systems (HCMSs), they must track the implementation and effectiveness of these systems in order to realize their full benefits. A human capital management (HCM) dashboard provides a visual representation of the implementation and effectiveness of HCM processes related to recruiting, hiring, developing, and retaining effective educators. Such a dashboard can be used to track and monitor progress toward achieving HCM goals. This brief, which provides an overview of the development of HCMS dashboards, first describes some of the work that the U.S. Department of Education and Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) districts have done to develop dashboards. It then presents an example of a comprehensive strategic dashboard and an example of metrics for a dashboard that focuses specifically on teacher recruitment. It concludes with a summary of 12 steps to consider in developing dashboards and a list of resources for developing HCM performance indicators that could be presented on a dashboard.

UTeach is a well-known, university-based program designed to increase the number of high-quality science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers in the workforce. The UTeach program was originally developed by faculty at the University of Texas at Austin but has rapidly spread and is now available at 44 universities in 21 states; it is expected to produce more than 9,000 math and science teachers by 2020. Despite substantial investment and rapid program diffusion, there is little evidence to date about the effectiveness of UTeach graduates. Using administrative data from the state of Texas, we measure UTeach impacts on student test scores in math and science in middle schools and high schools. We find that students taught by UTeach teachers perform significantly better on end-of-grade tests in math and end-of-course tests in math and science by 5% to 12% of a standard deviation on the test, depending on grade and subject. The effect is larger for the founding site at the University of Texas at Austin than for replication UTeach sites, with estimated upper bounds of additional months of learning for students taught by UTeach Austin graduates of 4.0 months in high school math and 5.7 months in high school science. Controlling for the selectivity of the undergraduate institution appears to explain the differential between Austin and replication UTeach sites, but not the overall difference between UTeach and non-UTeach teachers.

It is widely believed that teacher turnover adversely affects the quality of instruction in urban schools serving predominantly disadvantaged children, and a growing body of research investigates various components of turnover effects. The evidence at first seems contradictory, as the quality of instruction appears to decline following turnover despite the fact that most work shows higher attrition for less effective teachers. This raises concerns that confounding factors bias estimates of transition differences in teacher effectiveness, the adverse effects of turnover or both. After taking more extensive steps to account for nonrandom sorting of students into classrooms and endogenous teacher exits and grade-switching, we replicate existing findings of adverse selection out of schools and negative effects of turnover in lower-achievement schools. But we find that these turnover effects can be fully accounted for by the resulting loss in experience and productivity loss following the reallocation of some incumbent teachers to different grades. Supplemental tables are appended.

Student loans are a crucial aspect of financing a college education for millions of Americans, yet we have surprisingly little empirical evidence concerning individuals' unwillingness to borrow money for educational purposes. This study provides the first large-scale quantitative evidence of levels of loan aversion in the United States. Using survey data collected on more than 6,000 individuals, we examine the frequency of loan aversion in three distinct populations. Depending on the measure, between 20 to 40 percent of high school seniors exhibit loan aversion with lower rates among community college students and adults not in college. Women are less likely to express loan averse attitudes than men, and Hispanic respondents are more likely to be loan averse than white respondents.

Schools often track students to classes based on ability. Proponents of tracking argue it is a low-cost tool to improve learning since instruction is more effective when students are more homogeneous, while opponents argue it exacerbates initial differences in opportunities without strong evidence of efficacy. In fact, little is known about the pervasiveness or determinants of ability tracking in the US. To fill this gap, we use detailed administrative data from Texas to estimate the extent of tracking within schools for grades 4 through 8 over the years 2011-2019. We find substantial tracking; tracking within schools overwhelms any sorting by ability that takes place across schools. The most important determinant of tracking is heterogeneity in student ability, and schools operationalize tracking through the classification of students into categories such as gifted and disabled and curricular differentiation. When we examine how tracking changes in response to educational policies, we see that schools decrease tracking in response to accountability pressures. Finally, when we explore how exposure to tracking correlates with student mobility in the achievement distribution, we find positive effects on high-achieving students with no negative effects on low-achieving students, suggesting that tracking may increase inequality by raising the ceiling.

In 2012, five foundations launched the Credit When Its Due (CWID) initiative that was "designed to encourage partnerships of community colleges and universities to significantly expand programs that award associate degrees to transfer students when the student completes the requirements for the associate degree while pursuing a bachelor's degree" (Lumina Foundation, 2012, n.p.), also known as "reverse transfer." Initially, 12 states (Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oregon) were funded to develop and implement these reverse transfer programs and policies, and the Office of Community College Research and Leadership (OCCRL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was chosen as the research partner. In late 2013, three states (Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas) were added to bring the total number of states to 15. At least six additional states have legislation, pending legislation, or statewide initiatives related to reverse transfer. This thought paper describes changes that are occurring at the state, system, and institution levels with implementation of reverse transfer in the 12 original states. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected from the CWID Implementation Study, the authors describe efforts related to the optimization of reverse transfer in these 12 states. The authors define optimization as policy and program change at any level--state, system, or institution--that yields the largest number of students who are eligible for and able to benefit from reverse transfer. The initial results suggest that some states are piloting reverse transfer with a limited set of public community college and university partnerships, and others are striving for system-level reforms that eventually may impact all forms of transfer. Understanding what optimization means and how it works is possible because of this variation in implementation approaches among states, and this thought paper explores how states are implementing and optimizing reverse transfer.

The education system of the United States is not adequately preparing a large proportion of its students for college, career-training, and, ultimately, jobs that provide enough income to support a middle class standard of living. Because the education system has failed to attain hoped-for outcomes, some states are investigating new systems, including competency-based education (CBE). A model based on CBE starts by assessing what a student knows and then allows that student to advance at a pace that reflects his or her knowledge and skills. In the process, CBE encourages student success by providing targeted learning support, thereby creating a more personalized educational experience. Once in higher education or job training, CBE allows older students (traditional-age college students or adult learners) to learn on their own time at their own pace. As competency-based pilot projects are developed in kindergarten to high school classrooms and schools (K-12) and higher education institutions, policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels are discussing options about how to support and expand CBE in both K-12 and higher education, as well as strengthen the bridge between the two systems. CBE has the potential to improve the education system of the United States by allowing more students to receive the support they need when they need it to learn effectively and master the desired content and skills, and governors are in a position to bring these efforts together and explore the transition from an education system that holds time constant and varies what students learn to a CBE system that varies time but holds content mastery constant. The promise of such a system is that it can adjust the methods of instruction and assistance to provide deeper, more personalized learning and help ensure that all students meet or exceed the high expectations of rigorous and relevant standards.

Bolstered by the recommendations of the 1998 Boyer Report, US federal agencies have put significant resources into promoting opportunities for undergraduates to engage in research. American universities and colleges have been creating support programs and curricular opportunities intended to create a "culture of undergraduate research." Yet our knowledge about the commonality of undergraduate research engagement--how it integrates into the educational experience, and its benefits or lack thereof--is still very limited. Universities exude the ideal of a pivotal link of teaching and research. We have assumed that personal interactions between active scholars and undergraduates--via traditional curriculum, research courses, working in a lab or doing fieldwork--have positive influences on students' maturation and their overall academic and social experience. The following exploratory study looks at data generated by the 2010 Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) undergraduate survey, an online census administered that year at fifteen major research-intensive universities. In this case study of mostly AAU campuses, we find that while some 83 percent of upper division students (juniors and seniors) students experience one or more courses with a significant research requirement like a research paper or project, many lower and upper division students do not--a disappointing finding that needs to be addressed by these campuses. At the same time, undergraduate research engagement outside of the traditional classroom is a relatively common experience. Among those students we find that research engagement leads to self-reported learning gains across many areas, but especially in the areas of field knowledge, how to present and communicate knowledge, research skills, higher levels of satisfaction, better use of time, and higher levels of non-quantitative skills. Yet not all research activities are created equally. Participating in student research and independent studies contribute much more to the learning gains across all dimensions than merely assisting faculty in research. Among the two research activities, participating in student research course is more effective than independent studies in enhancing student learning. Among the three activities involving assisting faculty research, assisting faculty research as a volunteer without credit tends to be connected to higher level of gains than for credit and for pay. Taken together, it appears that research activities that involve active learning contribute more to student learning. We offer a number of recommendations to SERU campuses, including: 1. We encourage member campuses to explore what are the causes for some students not engaging in a research paper or project and seek a path to have all students have this form of research engagement; 2. Use the SERU database to provide regular reports on undergraduate research engagement, and include those reports in Academic Program/Department reviews; 3. Expand existing efforts so that most, if not all, undergraduates have the opportunity for two or more non-classroom forms of research engagement, perhaps depending on the field of the major and discipline. [The 1998 Boyer Commission Report--"Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities" is available in ERIC at ED424840.]

Building a stronger teacher workforce requires the thoughtful orchestration of multiple processes working together in a human capital system. This white paper presents a framework that can be used to take stock of current efforts to enhance the teacher workforce in school districts or educational organizations, as well as their underlying theories of how the teacher workforce improves over time. The paper refines and provides evidentiary support for a human capital system framework composed of four subsystems that ideally work together to build a stronger teacher workforce: (1) getting the right teachers in the right positions on time (Acquire); (2) supporting professional growth in school-based learning communities (Develop); (3) nurturing, rewarding, and challenging high-performing teachers (Sustain); and (4) informing evidence-based personnel decisions (Evaluate). Attention to this framework will engender a corps of teachers with the capacity and expertise to collectively facilitate enhanced educational outcomes.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are viewed as fundamental elements in the preparation of our next generation. This is evidenced by President Obama's goal of "moving our nation from the middle to the top of the pack in math and science education" and his focus on (a) hiring additional STEM teachers; (b) enhancing STEM literacy so students can think critically in key subjects; (c) improving the quality of instruction to help U.S. students perform competitively with those in other nations; and (d) expanding STEM education and career opportunities for women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups (The White House, 2010). To begin laying this foundation for students as they compete in the 21st century economy, educators and decision makers must continue to increase their understanding of various STEM education opportunities. They must also realize the need to establish support systems for diverse learners as they relate to STEM education, while at the same time recognize the economic impact of not moving in this direction. However, before this journey can begin, a deeper understanding of STEM and a workable definition must be established. The components of STEM are discussed in this brief following descriptions of the procedure by which resources were selected for this paper and the limitations of this paper. Summaries of STEM education initiatives for the states of Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas as well as contact information for individuals in the state departments of education that may provide additional information is included.

When Congress reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), much of the debate will undoubtedly focus on the accountability requirements added to Title I by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Title I authorizes federal aid to school districts to educate low-achieving children in low-income areas. Among the most controversial of these NCLB requirements are the provisions for determining whether schools and districts have made adequate yearly progress (AYP) in raising student achievement in reading and mathematics. This background paper from the Center on Education Policy (CEP) explores some of the factors that have influenced recent trends in the national percentage of public schools that have not made AYP, out of the total number of schools that reported AYP results. This paper is intended to serve as a companion to the report, "Update with 2009-10 Data and Five-Year Trends: How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress?" (CEP, 2011). As discussed in more detail in that five-year trend report, the national percentage of public schools failing to make AYP rose from 29% in 2006 to an estimated 38% in 2010 and actually decreased in two of the interim years. Although 38% is a record high percentage of schools not making AYP, it is still lower than what many observers had predicted by this point in NCLB implementation. CEP's analysis focused on 10 large or medium-sized states that had the greatest increases or decreases in the number of schools not making AYP or had other noteworthy AYP trends: California, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington. Its analysis revealed several factors, in addition to changes in student learning, that appear to account for some of the fluctuations in the national percentage of schools not making AYP and may help explain why these percentages have not escalated as quickly as some analysts have predicted. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) National trends in the percentage of schools not making AYP have been affected disproportionately by trends in a limited subset of states; (2) Changes in state testing policies have slowed, or even reversed, increases in the number of schools failing to make AYP in several states; (3) The NCLB "safe harbor" provision has also helped somewhat in keeping down the share of schools failing to make AYP in certain states; (4) The use of growth models appears to have had a limited impact on AYP trends in most of the growth model states analyzed; (5) In most of the states analyzed, the number of schools failing to make AYP increased substantially in the years when the state's achievement targets went up; (6) States that introduced new tests saw substantial short-term increases or decreases in the number of schools failing to make AYP; (7) In some states, changes in the number of schools not making AYP are largely attributable to changes in the cut scores defining "proficient" performance on state tests; (8) North Carolina's experience suggests that counting proficient scores from retests can reduce the number of schools failing to make AYP--especially in the short term; and (9) Even if most or all states adopt common standards and common assessments, variations in state accountability policies could continue to make it impossible to arrive at meaningful comparisons about the performance of different states. (Contains 6 footnotes.) [For the companion report, "Update with 2009-10 Data and Five-Year Trends: How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress?," see ED518993.]

Students who attend different colleges in the U.S. end up with vastly different economic outcomes. We study the role of relative value-added across colleges within student choice sets in producing these outcome disparities. Linking high school, college, and earnings registries spanning the state of Texas, we identify relative college value-added by comparing the outcomes of students who apply to and are admitted by the same set of institutions, as this approach strikingly balances observable student potential across college treatments and renders our extensive set of covariates irrelevant as controls. Methodologically, we develop a framework for identifying and interpreting value-added under varying assumptions about match effects and sorting gains. Empirically, we estimate a relatively tight, though non-degenerate, distribution of relative value-added across the wide diversity of Texas public universities. Selectivity poorly predicts value-added within student choice sets, with only a fleeting selectivity earnings premium fading to zero after a few years in the labor market. Non-peer college inputs like instructional spending more strongly predict value-added, especially conditional on selectivity. Colleges that boost BA completion, especially in STEM majors, also tend to boost earnings. Finally, we probe the potential for (mis)match effects by allowing value-added schedules to vary by student characteristics. [Additional financial support was received from the Robert H. Topel Faculty Research Fund at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.]

Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide on the contentious issue of Affirmative Action, and specifically the use of race in admissions decisions in public universities. Despite differences in the details, seasoned veterans of affirmative action debates are experiencing déjà vu. In this case, Abigail Noel Fisher claims overt racial discrimination when the highly selective University of Texas at Austin (UT) rejected her freshman application in 2008. The Court's ruling could range from upholding the legal precedent of allowing race to be one of many factors in admissions; to a more narrow decision that rejects UT's particular use of race, but sets new limits on such decisions; to an outright rejection of using race in any form as one among many factors universities currently use in admissions. In this paper, I discuss the case and present a number of themes that should be considered by the Court and by the public, including problems with the notion of a "critical mass" of minority students; that arguments regarding academic merit are complex and nuanced; and that among highly selective public universities, where demand from many qualified students far exceeds the supply of admissions spots, admissions policies have arbitrary outcomes despite the best efforts to create rational and explainable admissions policies. As much as anything, the Fisher case is about the appropriate locus of admissions policy and decisions. The historical precedent, as reiterated by Justice Sandra Day O'Conner in the 2003 "Grutter" case, is that judgments related to the question of admissions, including the idea of sufficient critical mass of underrepresented students and factors that indicate future academic success, are, in the end, judgments that should remain within the Academy and which the courts should not infringe on without a compelling need to do so. There is no compelling need in the Fisher case. Simply agreeing to hear the case seems to indicate a willingness by the Court to overrule past precedent. Yet there is also a possibility that the Court's decision will be influenced by the prospect that a ruling against affirmative action will, for the first time, have meaning for selective private institutions, which have largely avoided scrutiny of their admissions practices and biases. As all of the justices are products of eastern elite private institutions, this could be an important consideration, although speculative.