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In this brief, the authors examine changes in enrollments at the Los Angeles Community College District between fall 2017 and summer 2023 to document the extent of pandemic-era enrollment declines overall and across student populations.

Chetty et al. (2022) say county density of cross-class friendships (referred to here as "adult-bridging capital") has causal impacts on social mobility within the United States. We instead find that social mobility rates are a function of county density of family capital (higher marriage rates and two-person households), community capital (community organizations, religious congregations, and volunteering), and mean student achievement in grades 3-8. Our models use similar multiple regression equations and the same variables employed by Chetty et al. but also include state fixed effects, student achievement, and family, community, schoolbridging (cross-class high school friendships), and political (participation and institutional trust) capital. School-bridging capital is weakly correlated with mobility if adult-bridging is excluded from the model. R-squared barely changes when adult-bridging is incorporated into the model. When it is included, mobility continues to be significantly correlated with the achievement, family, and community variables but not with school-bridging and political ones. We infer that county mobility rates are largely shaped by parental presence, community life, and student achievement. To enhance mobility, public policy needs to enhance the lives of disadvantaged people at home, in school, and in communities, not just the social class of their friendships.

For a growing share of learners and workers in the United States, college is failing to live up to its economic mobility promise. The cost of college is rising, accompanied by mounting student debt, and many graduates are underemployed following college. Students face steep barriers to college enrollment and success, including time demands, access to housing and childcare, and transportation. These conditions have prompted many learners and workers to reconsider whether college is truly worth the expense. Higher education leaders are facing a moment of reckoning in which they must improve the economic returns of a college education. However, there is little clarity around which programs and initiatives best improve a student's earnings and employment later in their career. The dearth of information reflects, at least in part, the lack of attention and resources such programs have received from the majority of post-secondary institutions. This white paper puts "college-to-jobs" programs in focus, making the case that they should be a priority for future policy, investment, and research. It maps the field of initiatives that smooth transitions for college students to the workforce, identifying 13 "interventions" that have been deployed to improve college students' economic outcomes. The Playbook provides answers to a crucial question at a time of inflection for postsecondary education: what can we do to launch more college students onto successful career trajectories? [This report was co-published by the Project on Workforce and was funded by the Capital One Foundation.]

To make up for pandemic-related learning losses, many U.S. public school districts have increased enrollment in their summer school programs. We assess summer school as a strategy for COVID-19 learning recovery by tracking the academic progress of students who attended summer school in 2022 across eight districts serving 400,000 students. Based on students' spring to fall progress, we find a positive impact for summer school on math test achievement (0.03 standard deviation, SD), but not on reading tests. These effects are predominantly driven by students in upper elementary grades. To put the results into perspective, if we assume that these districts have losses similar to those present at the end of the 2022-23 school year (i.e., approximately -0.2 SD), we estimate summer programming closed approximately 2% to 3% of the districts' total learning losses in math, but none in reading.

Anti-scientific attitudes can impose substantial costs on societies. Can schools be an important agent in mitigating the propagation of such attitudes? This paper investigates the effect of the content of science education on anti-scientific attitudes, knowledge, and choices. The analysis exploits staggered reforms that reduce or expand the coverage of evolution theory in US state science education standards. I compare adjacent cohorts in models with state and cohort fixed effects and conduct fine-grained placebo tests to rule out scientific, religious and political confounders. There are three main results. First, expanded evolution coverage increases students' knowledge about evolution. Second, the reforms translate into greater evolution belief in adulthood, but do not crowd out religiosity or affect political attitudes. Third, the reforms affect high-stakes life decisions, namely the probability of working in life sciences.

It is widely accepted that investing in early childhood helps build the foundations of a healthy, productive, and equitable society. Guided by that knowledge, a range of broad-based programs and targeted services make a significant difference for millions of children, yet a closer look at outcome data shows that some benefit greatly, some benefit less, and some not at all. Within this variation lies opportunity. Increasing effects for all children--especially those who currently benefit the least--may be the key that unlocks greater impacts at scale. Building upon science presented in the two previous working papers from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child ("Connecting the Brain to the Rest of the Body: Early Childhood Development" and "Lifelong Health Are Deeply Intertwined and Place Matters: The Environment We Create Shapes the Foundations of Healthy Development"), this paper examines two types of variation. The most commonly addressed refers to differences between demographic groups (e.g., income, parent education, race/ethnicity), which are heavily influenced by structural inequities. The second, which science tells us needs increased attention, refers to individual variation within and across groups that is explained by how the effects of a variety of experiences are influenced by each child's unique genetic makeup and the timing of the exposure, beginning prenatally. This paper calls for a significant shift in how we design, implement, and evaluate policies and programs. It explains how expecting individual variation in effectiveness, and planning for flexible implementation, avoids false stereotypes based on income or race and is likely to achieve larger impacts for all children and thus generate greater returns on investment for society.

Water is essential for life. The brain, heart, kidneys, and lungs require continued hydration to function, and our bodies need water for digestion, nutrient absorption, blood distribution, and so much more. While water comprises around 60% of the adult body, 75% of infants' bodies are water. Children also drink more water per pound of body weight than adults, with infants consuming the most, whether through formula prepared with water or through breast milk. Because our bodies need a near-constant supply of water, the availability and quality of water are critical parts of the environment that shape child development. This is particularly true during the prenatal and early childhood periods when bodies are especially sensitive to outside influences. However, in the U.S., the systems that were once widely presumed to produce nearly universal, clean, affordable, and trustworthy water have serious gaps and challenges. Additionally, freshwater supplies are being threatened by droughts, overuse, and contamination, exacerbated by climate change. Inequities in access to clean water are the result of decisions that we have made as communities, states, and a nation. New decisions can reverse these inequities and provide all people with access to clean drinking water, with profound effects on the health and well-being of our children. This working paper from the Early Childhood Scientific Council on Equity and the Environment explores how water affects children's health, learning, and behavior, and how ensuring access to safe drinking water is necessary to support the healthy development of all children. It offers specific strategies to address disparities in access to clean water and resources to take action in your community.

This brief is one in a series aimed at providing K-12 education decision makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students during and following the novel coronavirus pandemic. It addresses one central question: How can system leaders improve reading comprehension for students in kindergarten to grade 4 through stronger Tier I English language arts instruction? In order to answer this question, the brief breaks down the issue into four points: (1) Throughout the early elementary grades, students struggle to comprehend grade-level texts that require strong word recognition skills, vocabulary and background knowledge, mastery of complex syntax, and the ability to draw inferences; (2) Word recognition and language comprehension are central to how well a student understands a written passage; (3) Reading comprehension also depends on the reader, the text, the activity, and the context; and (4) Failing to read proficiently in the early elementary grades can have long-lasting negative consequences for students' future educational and economic success. Based on these points, the brief provides eight strategies to consider and three strategies to avoid.