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The urgent need to help students -- and particularly students who are Black or Hispanic -- recover from the negative effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on mathematics learning and access equitable opportunities in mathematics will require that teachers use every available tool to diagnose student learning needs and identify solutions. Teachers' use of data, including informal assessments, standardized or benchmark assessments, classroom observations, attendance, demographic data, instructional strategies on standards-aligned content, and growth reports, could be a valuable tool in addressing these challenges. In this report, researchers provide a look at the student data to which Florida mathematics teachers have access and use to identify students in need of support, and whether teachers are adequately supported to use student data effectively in their daily instruction. [For "Learn Together Surveys. 2022 Technical Documentation and Survey Results. Research Report. RR-A827-9," see ED626092.]

The U.S. manufacturing industry is experiencing a resurgence and faces a growing need for highly skilled workers. Recent reports project that demand for highly-skilled manufacturing workers will outpace supply in coming years, and this shortage may grow as the U.S. manufacturing industry grows and its labor needs shift. Furthermore, manufacturing has traditionally employed a largely white and male workforce, and there is growing interest in bringing a more diverse set of workers into manufacturing. To identify promising strategies to expand the supply of highly skilled manufacturing workers and meet employers' growing skill demands, a group of RAND researchers examined the pipeline between Ohio's postsecondary education system and manufacturing employment in Ohio. The researchers also explored the extent to which workers with manufacturing-related skills or credentials forgo work in the industry. This research brief summarizes the education and employment patterns revealed by the research.

Manufacturing employers often cite challenges to finding and hiring a sufficient number of highly skilled and diverse workers, so it is important to understand how pathways into manufacturing and the retention of manufacturing workers may be improved. The authors of this report address this research gap by examining the pipeline between Ohio's postsecondary education system and the manufacturing workforce. They focus on understanding potential ways to expand the supply of workers and the diversity of the manufacturing workforce. Although Ohio represents a subset of the U.S. manufacturing industry, it has a significant share of manufacturing employment and production. Therefore, it can be instructive for more broadly understanding the challenges and opportunities that workers, employers, and educational institutions in manufacturing face.

Florida is experiencing a shortage of high-quality mathematics teachers. According to the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE), there was a critical shortage of K-12 mathematics teachers (among several other subject areas) at the start of the 2022-2023 school year (FLDOE, 2022). In this report, the authors present selected findings from the 2022 Learn Together Survey (LTS), describing the credentialing pathways taken by Florida mathematics teachers, the teachers' perspectives on the content of their teacher preparation programs, and the availability and helpfulness of resources to enter and complete a teacher preparation program. The findings of this report are descriptive and intended to contribute to Florida policymakers' understanding of the composition and preparation of the mathematics teacher workforce. Thus, implications or present recommendations are not discussed.

All students--particularly students of color--benefit academically and socially from having teachers who are people of color. However, people of color face systemic barriers to becoming and remaining teachers at multiple points throughout their careers. For example, people of color are more likely than their White peers to incur student debt, might not have access to teacher role models who share their lived experiences, experience bias during the hiring process, and are more likely to work in challenging environments once they become teachers. This report presents selected findings from the 2022 State of the American Teacher survey related to increasing the racial and ethnic diversity of the teacher workforce. The authors surveyed and interviewed teachers and convened a panel of education policymakers to gain deeper insight into the policies and practices that could be most effective for recruiting, hiring, and retaining teachers of color. The teacher voices presented in this report provide a source of evidence that teacher preparation providers, education leaders, and policymakers could use to identify and prioritize a set of practices to increase workforce diversity in their localities. [For "State of the American Teacher and State of the American Principal Surveys: 2022 Technical Documentation and Survey Results. Research Report. RR-A1108-3," see ED621137.]

Teachers, like the students they serve, never stop learning. In-service teacher professional development (PD) gives educators opportunities to learn more about pedagogy and improve their own instruction methods to boost students' academic and social and emotional outcomes. Districts make a significant financial investment to provide teacher PD, and research on the impact of teacher PD on teacher instructional practices and student education outcomes has been mixed. In addition, there are only a few studies that examine the impact of teacher PD using rigorous empirical evaluation designs (such as randomized control trials) and consider PD across multiple contexts (public versus charter schools). The authors evaluated the Chicago Collaborative, a teacher PD program that is aligned to Common Core Standards and implemented by Leading Educators, a national nonprofit organization that partners with districts and charter management organizations to help teachers develop the leadership skills that they need to successfully transition from leading students to leading their peers. The authors conducted a randomized control trial evaluation using data from 40 schools across three school districts in the Chicago area during the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 school years. They examined how the Chicago Collaborative program was implemented and whether the program impacted student achievement. The authors found that the Chicago Collaborative was successfully delivered, despite the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic at the end of the research period in 2020. The authors also found robust evidence that the Chicago Collaborative increased student test scores. [This research report was published by the RAND Corporation (ED621808).]

Principal and teacher well-being is a matter of immediate concern for principals and teachers themselves and for the students they teach. Stress on the job can negatively affect educators' physical health, and poor teacher wellness and mental health are linked with lower-quality student learning environments and with poorer academic and nonacademic student outcomes. Furthermore, previous research suggests that principals and teachers of color are more likely than their White peers to experience poor well-being and are more likely to leave their jobs. Understanding the relationships among teacher and principal well-being, perceived working conditions, and teachers' and principals' intentions to leave their current position is critical for pandemic recovery and for the long-term health of the principal and teacher workforce. In this report, researchers present selected findings from the 2022 State of the American Teacher (SoT) and State of the American Principal (SoP) surveys. These findings are related to teacher and principal well-being, working conditions, and intentions to leave their jobs. The authors focus specifically on the well-being and working conditions of educators of color. [For technical information about the surveys and analysis in this report, see "State of the American Teacher and State of the American Principal Surveys: 2022 Technical Documentation and Survey Results" (ED621137).]

This technical report provides information about the sample, content, and administration of the 2022 State of the American Teacher (SoT) and State of the American Principal (SoP) surveys. The SoT survey was completed by 2,360 American Teacher Panel members, and the SoP survey was completed by 1,540 American School Leader Panel members. The American Life Panel (ALP) companion survey was administered to 500 ALP members in January and February 2022. The report also describes the teacher interview protocols and qualitative methods used for interviews with SoT respondents. The SoT and SoP surveys addressed teachers' and principals' well-being (e.g., job-related stress, depression, burnout), school climate (e.g., physical safety; teacher/principal voice; staff diversity, equity, and inclusion), teachers' and principals' working conditions this school year (e.g., instructional mode; hours worked; coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID-19] mitigation policies; beliefs about the teaching of race, racism, and bias), and teachers' and principals' careers as educators (e.g., preparation, retention, decisions to exit). Teachers were also asked about policies that they believed would be effective for recruiting, hiring, and retaining educators of color. Principals were also asked a series of questions related to their preparation to address political topics in their schools.

In a time when simply carrying out the essential functions of their jobs is a herculean task, educators have been faced with the additional challenge of addressing contentious, politicized topics in their schools and classrooms. Drawing from nationally representative samples of teachers and principals who completed the 2022 State of the American Teacher and the State of the American Principal surveys and teacher interviews, the authors focus their analysis on two especially politically salient issues: (1) how to implement COVID-19 safety measures with the return to in-person schooling; and (2) the role and emphasis that discussions about race, racism, or bias may or should have in schools. They investigate how these two highly politicized topics might contribute to elevated job-related stress by examining potential contributing factors, such as the extent to which educators must manage conflicting beliefs and opinions, the adequacy of support they receive, and the hostility and aggression that they experience from others in response to related policies. The authors also explore differences by educator- and school-level characteristics. Although politicized topics are more contested in some school settings and locales than in others, survey results suggest that educators' beliefs about how schools should manage politicized issues vary within all kinds of school communities. The authors explore the consequences of politicization for educators' instructional practices, well-being, perceptions of their school and district climate, and intentions to leave their jobs. They provide implications and recommendations on how to support educators in navigating politicized issues in their schools and classrooms in a way that fosters productive discourse between communities and schools. [For the "State of the American Teacher and State of the American Principal Surveys: 2022 Technical Documentation and Survey Results. Research Report. RR-A1108-3," see ED621137.]

The COVID-19 pandemic presented new challenges for educators who teach students with disabilities (SWD). Research on the experiences of SWD during the pandemic is limited, but what is known suggests that SWD access to services and supports declined during the pandemic and that steeper learning losses are likely. Pandemic interruptions may be particularly problematic for secondary SWD because they missed out on critical preparation experiences while approaching the transition to college and career. Given these disruptions, it is critical that educators have the support and training they need to accelerate learning for SWD moving forward. This report presents national survey findings from secondary school principals and educators from the spring of the 2020-2021 school year, exploring educators' access to and use of supports for teaching SWD. The analysis focuses on the roles that teachers play and the service delivery models that they use for teaching SWD.

This report provides information about the sample, survey instrument, and resultant data for the 2021 Learn Together Surveys (LTS) that were administered to secondary principals and teachers in March 2021 via the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels. It includes a full set of basic frequency tables for each survey. The LTS focus on several topics, including serving students with disabilities, supporting students' transitions to postsecondary pathways, data use, student voice, and social and emotional learning, and the survey results are intended to inform policy and practice related to these and other topics. This report serves as technical documentation for reports and data notes that draw on 2021 LTS data. The 2021 LTS yielded 3,605 complete responses for teachers and 1,686 complete responses for principals, and the responses are weighted to ensure that they are nationally representative. [For the 2020 report, see ED615566.]

Teachers commonly rely on many sources of information to diagnose student needs and to identify the most-appropriate resources to support those needs. In this Data Note, the authors use nationally representative survey response data from the 2021 Learn Together Surveys (LTS) to examine how secondary teachers leverage different types of information to guide them to the supports and interventions that they use in the classroom. Drawing on responses from 3,605 6th- to 12th-grade teachers, the authors focus their discussion on survey items from the "Supporting Struggling Students" and "Sources of Information and Support" portions of the survey. They compare teacher responses across various school-level characteristics, including school free and reduced-price lunch enrollment, percentage of non-white students, and school locale, and various self-reported teacher-level characteristics, such as main subject taught, grade band taught, race/ethnicity, and their school's mode of instruction during the 2020-2021 school year. The authors conclude with implications and policy recommendations based on their analysis.