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Massive online user review platforms, with their star ratings and text reviews, are reshaping the information available for consumer and public service decisions. We study the leading K-12 schooling platform, GreatSchools, applying machine learning (Natural Language Processing, NLP) to 600,000 reviews that encompass the vast majority of the nation's traditional public, charter, and private schools (84,009 schools in total), supplemented with qualitative analysis of a subsample of reviews. Encompassing more than fifty million words of text, our initial analysis pre-specified eight broad topics and 27 sub-topics and coded review words into these categories. We find that parents write the vast majority of reviews and tend to write more about School Staff and School Culture than students. More generally, text reviews vary in important ways across user types (parents, students, teachers, principals), school sector (traditional public, charter, and private schools), grade level, and demographics. The partial correlation between topics and star ratings also differs across user types and sectors. Taken together, these results suggest that user reviews are less useful than they appear and less useful than with other kinds of products. Our analysis points to design features that might improve their usefulness. The variation in content and value of the reviews also has methodological implications as it shows how NLP can complement qualitative research methods with such large volumes of text.

The transition from high school into postsecondary education and a career has become particularly challenging given today's complex, fast-moving, and highly technological economy. To combat this problem, one approach widely adopted in the United States is the career academy model, which combines a college-preparatory and career and technical curriculum with a career theme and is often structured as a small learning community within a larger high school. Shifts in the labor market, reforms to secondary education, and a growth in both high school graduation and postsecondary enrollment rates across the United States prompt new questions about how participating in career academies may affect current students' academic and labor outcomes. MDRC is currently conducting another long-term randomized controlled trial of career academies to help answer these questions. This study explores California Partnership Academies (CPAs), which are partially state-funded career academies within high schools across California. The study will follow participants for the eight years after expected high school graduation and look at the impacts on students' high school, postsecondary education, and employment and earnings outcomes. This report explores the impacts of CPAs on students' high school graduation and college readiness at the end of high school as well as their college enrollment during the first year after graduation. It also examines the differences between the school experiences of the students who were offered a spot in a CPA (CPA group) and of those who were not offered a spot (non-CPA group), as well as some of the early effects of the program on teachers' attention to and expectations of students and on students' collaboration with each other, their perceived relevance of schoolwork, and their plans after high school.

In this brief, we detail three major findings from our year of interviews and observations: (1) We describe how the external contexts of schooling shifted throughout the pandemic and how many of these outside pressures persist today; (2) We look internally at how district leaders make sense of external pressures and weigh their internal values to set budget priorities, arrive at defining problems, then remedy these concerns. Districts displayed three ways of emerging from the pandemic after the return to in-person learning; and (3) We compare the different solutions or innovations that districts pursued to reengage students and support their well-being. We compare large and small structural innovations as well as pedagogical and organizational innovations.

Wisconsin voters approved a record number of referenda in 2024 to increase property taxes to fund their local schools, and nearly set a record for the most referenda to fund municipalities or counties. However, the approval rate for school ballot questions continued a downward trend. These trends raise questions about both the adequacy of current state funding and the impact on property taxpayers. This brief examines the these referenda throughout Wisconsin.

Recent data from Chicago Public Schools (CPS) show that active English Learners were less likely to graduate from high school (77% did so in 2023) than their peers (85%) and less likely to enroll in college (56% of 2022 English Learners high school graduates enrolled in college compared to 66 percent of their non-English Learners high school graduate peers), drawing attention to what supports these students need and what barriers they face on the road to college. To understand the academic performance in high school, college enrollment, and college persistence of English Learners, this study highlights metrics for former English Learners and different groups of active English Learners (at the time of enrollment in ninth grade). The focus of this study is on understanding different indicators of academic performance in high school, college enrollment, and college persistence of English Learners--including variation in attainment among active and former English Learners--to support their path to high school graduation and access to college. Using three cohorts of students who were first-time ninth-graders in the fall of 2014, 2015, and 2016 where 33% of students were English Learners, the authors conclude that English Learners are not perpetually struggling, as publicly reported numbers suggest, but specific groups of English Learners need more support. There are some commonalities among English Learners, but also some key differences, suggesting that there are different strategies that would be effective in supporting different English Learners groups. [This report was co-produced by the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice.]

Public schools buckled under the shock that arrived with the global pandemic, most closing their doors in March 2020. Still fresh in our memories, teachers attempted online instruction, viewing their students each day as small squares on computer screens. We know all too well that learning curves of students flattened or fell. Many kids and teachers experienced death in their families, along with emotional angst that's still reported by local educators. Yet as the COVID-19 virus receded, our research team began visiting a handful of California school districts in early 2021. We asked district leaders and school principals about how they were recovering from this unprecedented jolt, along with the challenges and joys of returning to in-person schooling. These early conversations also revealed a variety of organizational and pedagogical innovations--from digitally enlivened lessons to intense work with small groups of pupils. Teachers and staff, still dealing with health challenges in their own families, were turning to the social and emotional well-being of their students.

Despite a decline from the previous year, rates of chronic absenteeism for Wisconsin's students -- defined as missing more than one in ten school days for any reason -- remained at historically high levels in 2023 for children of every race, grade level, and socioeconomic status. District leaders point to many causes, including lasting impacts of the pandemic. Some have made improvements through strong communication campaigns and concerted, districtwide efforts.

As our education systems continue to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic we urge the next administration to prioritize investing wisely in the future of our nation through federal programs and policies that support the nation's 50 million K-12 public school students. A comprehensive and significant investment in the education of our public school students has never been more important to reducing the racial and socio-economic inequities plaguing American society today and providing a pathway for social and economic mobility. On behalf of public schools CEOs with deep expertise in education policy and as the largest employer in many communities, AASA crafts these recommendations for how the next administration can dramatically improve educational outcomes, reduce educational inequities and ensure the students in our schools today are able to excel in an increasingly competitive global workforce. Public schools perform critical functions for children and families, as well as for businesses, industries, and communities. Public schools are not just places where children can come to learn about democratic values; they are polling locations, interim food banks, and emergency shelters. The pandemic reminded us that the health and wellness of a community is directly linked to the health and wellness of the school system.

The focus of this report is on mental health interventions delivered in K-12 neighborhood public schools. A vast array of commercially available programs, conceptual frameworks, and approaches to school-based mental health are not unanimously recommended, applied, or agreed upon. This poses a challenge to any comprehensive description or evaluation of school-based mental health. Key findings include: (1) There is a lack of high-quality evidence to support school-based mental health initiatives. Rigorous evaluations of universal programs on mental health literacy, awareness, prevention, and screening--and of many social-emotional learning programs--find neither reduced rates of mental health conditions nor improved academic outcomes; (2) The concept of school-based mental health, as currently delivered in typical neighborhood public schools, is incoherent because it primarily serves youth who are not specifically in need of mental health treatment, while insufficiently serving those with mental disorders; (3) While some youth can benefit from high-quality mental health services, universal mental health programs carry underestimated potential harms: directly, through poor-quality care, overdiagnosis, and misallocated spending; and indirectly, through wasted class time and reduced accountability in the mental health and education systems; and (4) Federal agencies responsible for school-based mental health programs provide no meaningful or coordinated guidance on essential questions such as what it means for a program to be effective, what expectations exist in "mental health deserts," and how schools should sort through numerous overlapping initiatives.

Since the peak of the pandemic in 2020, enrollment in virtual schools has steadily increased, with virtual schools now accounting for approximately 1.4% of the nation's public school students. While the effects of the pandemic on student achievement and mental health have been extensively studied, research has yet to thoroughly examine the impact of the pandemic on state policies and local organizational practices related to virtual schooling. Although some believed the onset of the pandemic would fundamentally reshape virtual schooling options in K-12 education, others were more skeptical, believing expanded virtual learning options were merely a temporary fix. This study examines whether the pandemic shaped virtual schooling at both the local and state levels, and if the changes made are likely to last and/or improve equity. The authors interviewed state and local education leaders and advocates, analyzed policy documents, websites, and media, observed legislative proceedings, and examined organizational practices in a sample of schools between 2019 and 2022 in Oregon. This state had an extensive history of virtual schooling before the pandemic, and enrollment continues to grow. The findings offer important lessons for policymakers and leaders to consider as the availability of virtual schools remains widespread across the country.

We use data from the applications North Carolina public school districts and charter schools submitted for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) to investigate the sense that educational leaders made of the pandemic as it unfolded. LEAs understood the pandemic as a multifaceted problem. Nearly all applications addressed four problems: (1) public health, (2) academics and learning loss, (3) student and community well-being, and (4) instructional access. However, we document considerable variation in problem emphasis over time, across LEAs, and across organizational sector. The pandemic was not a single organizational problem, but many simultaneous problems posed in varying and shifting combinations. We argue this multi-faceted organizational view should be a starting point for assessments of LEAs' pandemic response.

We examine the efficiency of traditional school districts versus charter schools in providing students with teachers who meet their demographic and education needs. Using panel data from the state of Michigan, we estimate the relationship between enrollment of Black, Hispanic, special education, and English learner students and the presence of Black, Hispanic, Special Education, and ESL teachers, and test whether this relationship differs at charter and traditional district-run schools. Because charter schools typically have less market power in hiring than large districts, we compare charter school employment practices to traditional public schools in districts of comparable size. Our results suggest that charter schools are more likely to employ same race teachers for Black students but not Hispanic students, and districts schools are slightly better at providing ESL and SPED teachers. We conclude that charter autonomy does not necessary generate better student-teacher matches, but Michigan charters may occupy a market niche by serving Black students and staffing Black teachers.

Sometimes a treatment, such as receiving a high school diploma, is assigned to students if their scores on two inputs (e.g., math and English test scores) are above established cutoffs. This forms a multidimensional regression discontinuity design (RDD) to analyze the effect of the educational treatment where there are two running variables instead of one. Present methods for estimating such designs either collapse the two running variables into a single running variable, estimate two separate one-dimensional RDDs, or jointly model the entire response surface. The first two approaches may lose valuable information, while the third approach can be very sensitive to model misspecification. We examine an alternative approach, developed in the context of geographic RDDs, which uses Gaussian processes to flexibly model the response surfaces and estimate the impact of treatment along the full range of students that were on the margin of receiving treatment. We demonstrate theoretically, in simulation, and in an applied example, that this approach has several advantages over current approaches, including over another nonparametric surface response method. In particular, using Gaussian process regression in two-dimensional RDDs shows strong coverage and standard error estimation, and allows for easy examination of treatment effect variation for students with different patterns of running variables and outcomes. As these nonparametric approaches are new in education-specific RDDs, we also provide an R package for users to estimate treatment effects using Gaussian process regression.

The Kansas Graduate and Dropout Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of how the Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) calculates and reports the Adjusted Cohort Graduation and Annual Dropout Rates. Sections include: (1) Introduction; (2) Terminology; (3) Data Sources; (4) Graduation Calculations; (5) Dropout Calculation; and (6) Dropout Graduation Summary Report (DGSR). [For the previous handbook, see ED624065.]

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to evaluate the implementation and impact of the IDEA Public Schools' Mathematics Curriculum Redesign (MCR) effort, funded by an Innovation and Research (EIR) grant. Methods: The study used a quasi-experimental matching design to examine the effect of MCR on student achievement outcomes. The study compared outcomes between the two cohorts of students at IDEA Public Schools that piloted the MCR and matched cohorts of students in IDEA schools that had delayed implementation of MCR. Results:?The study found statistically significant differences in IDEA Geometry test scores (ES = 0.39) between treatment and comparison group students in Grade 9 and on AP Calculus exam scores between treatment and comparison group students in Grade 12 (ES = 0.57). The study also found that the MCR program met the evaluation threshold for fidelity of implementation for the two out of three key program components (development of redesigned math curriculum and teacher use of math curriculum) in some years. The program did not meet the evaluation threshold for fidelity of implementation for the third key program components (teacher training and professional development to use redesigned math curriculum) in any of the years. Implications:?Because curriculum development and implementation are ongoing and iterative, realizing all of the benefits is not immediate and may take more time to achieve desired results. Continuous improvement of the curriculum and consistent supports to teachers will contribute to continued benefits for teachers and students while moving toward reaching anticipated student outcomes.

This is the executive summary for the report "Roll Call: A Landscape Review of the Students, Financing, and performance of Milwaukee's K-12 Schools." The report takes stock of the changes that have occurred in the city's overall "system" of schools, including student enrollment and demographics, financing, and outcomes. Key observations from the report's analysis are provided.

This report arrives during a time of heightened scrutiny and civic engagement. While public attention is currently trained primarily on Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), this research encompasses the whole of the city's education system, marking both commonalities and differences between different types of publicly funded schools. It highlights financial aspects of the system but also expands the discussion to include student enrollment and outcomes. The report is organized into three major sections: Milwaukee's Students and Schools, covering the basic schooling options available to students along with student enrollment and demographic trends; School Funding in Milwaukee, outlining the core funding mechanisms and their funding levels for schools in the city; and Student Outcomes and School Performance, summarizing broad trends in Milwaukee's academic results. The report concludes with key insights for the consideration of both policymakers and the public. It is hoped the report's findings ground both current and future policy discussions with important facts and nonpartisan insights. The authors further intend to inform those discussions with a second report this fall, which will highlight promising K-12 practices and innovations occurring both within Milwaukee and nationally.

Specialized high schools are an increasingly popular way to prepare young adults for postsecondary experiences and expand school choice. While much literature ex- amines charter school spillover effects and the effects of specialized schools on the students who attend them, little is known about the spillover effects of specialized high schools on traditional public schools (TPS). Using an event study design, we show that one type of specialized high school, North Carolina's Cooperative Innovative High Schools, initially attracted students who were higher achieving and more likely to be white than TPS students, but these specialized schools became more representative of the district population over time. On average, the opening of specialized schools had a mix of null and positive spillover effects on TPS student achievement. While there is some evidence of negative spillovers from the first schools that opened, the effects become more positive over time.

Catholic schools have seen more than a 30% decline in enrollment over the past 20 years. While some of the decline in enrollment may have been spurred by secular trends or the Church abuse scandal, the increase in schools of choice, principally public charter schools, may explain at least some of this decline. In this paper we estimate the effect of the opening of charter schools in proximity to Catholic schools across the entire U.S. We find that the opening of a nearby charter school has a negative impact on Catholic school enrollment and increases the likelihood that the school will close. We also find that charter openings induce greater racial isolation. Findings are especially pronounced in K8 schools, rather than high schools.

Despite well-designed curriculum materials, teachers often face challenges in their implementation due to diverse classroom needs. This paper investigates whether Large Language Models (LLMs) can support middle-school math teachers by helping create high-quality curriculum scaffolds, which we define as the adaptations and supplements teachers employ to ensure all students can access and engage with the curriculum. Through Cognitive Task Analysis with expert teachers, we identify a three-stage process for curriculum scaffolding: observation, strategy formulation, and implementation. We incorporate these insights into three LLM approaches to create warmup tasks that activate background knowledge. The best-performing approach, which provides the model with the original curriculum materials and an expert-informed prompt, generates warmups that are rated significantly higher than warmups created by expert teachers in terms of alignment to learning objectives, accessibility to students working below grade level, and teacher preference. This research demonstrates the potential of LLMs to support teachers in creating effective scaffolds and provides a methodology for developing AI-driven educational tools. [This report was funded by Stanford's Center for Human-Centered AI and the Stanford Accelerator for Learning.]

The expansion and increasing popularity of Advanced Placement (AP) programs have led to a new and significant trend: students are taking AP courses earlier in their high school journey, with a notable increase in enrollment among freshmen and sophomores. This study examines the effects of early engagement in AP courses for students deemed "academically underprepared", as indicated by their previous standardized test scores in reading and mathematics. By examining "academically underprepared" students transitioning from public middle schools to public high schools in Texas, this research challenges the prevailing assumption that early AP involvement is less advantageous for students with lower prior test scores. The goal is to understand whether early participation in AP courses might contribute to greater educational equity and enhancement, providing perspectives on how AP involvement can improve academic success and readiness for college among students often considered underprepared. This research not only reassesses conventional measures of academic readiness but also seeks to highlight the AP program's potential as a tool for educational advancement and equity.

Each year, SC TEACHER publishes different workforce profiles, sharing details and demographics around South Carolina educators for a better understanding of our public school workforce. Among these publications, this report is the first to examine the state's school "administrator" workforce. The analysis in this report uses statewide data from 2022-23, as well as available data from published research, to compare South Carolina's administrator workforce with the overall national administrator workforce and that of other states. This report also provides a longitudinal view of state trends by comparing data across three academic years from 2020-21 to 2022-23. State data were collected for 3,388 South Carolina administrators with positions categorized as either principal or assistant principal.

This research uses the implementation of a school suspension ban in Maryland to test whether a top-down state-initiated ban on suspensions in early primary grades can influence school behavior regarding school discipline. Beginning in the fall of 2017, the State of Maryland banned the use of out-of-school suspensions for grades PK-2, unless a student posed an "imminent threat" to staff or students. This research investigates (1) what was the effect of the ban on discipline outcomes for students in both treated grades and upper elementary grades not subject to the ban? (2) did schools bypass the ban by coding more events as threatening or increasing the use of in-school suspensions? and (3) were there differential effects for students in groups that are historically suspended more often? Using a comparative interrupted time series strategy, we find that the ban is associated with a substantial reduction in, but not a total elimination of, out-of-school suspensions for targeted grades without substitution of in-school suspensions. Disproportionalities by race and other characteristics remain after the ban. Grades not subject to the ban experienced few effects, suggesting the ban did not trigger a schoolwide response that reduced exclusionary discipline.

As women increasingly entered the labor force throughout the late 20th century, the challenges of balancing work and family came to the forefront. We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children--through duration expansions to the kindergarten day--to better understand mothers' and families' constraints. We first show that mothers of children in full-day kindergarten spend significantly more time at work, less time with their children, less time performing household duties, and less time commuting with their children in the middle of the day relative to mothers with half-day kindergarteners. Exploiting full-day kindergarten variation across place and time from 1992 through 2022, combined with the narrow age targeting of kindergarten, we document the impact of full-day kindergarten access on parental labor supply, family childcare costs, and children's subsequent academic outcomes. Our estimates of the maternal employment effects imply that full-day kindergarten expansions were responsible for as much as 24 percent of the growth in employment of mothers with kindergarten-aged children in this time frame.

In the face of financial, political, and capacity constraints, leaders within the Baltimore City Public School System and Chicago Public Schools are making progress toward closing post-pandemic gaps in student learning. The executive leadership teams serving Baltimore City Public School System and Chicago Public Schools are using several strategies to help their systems build back after the pandemic including: (1) standardizing key elements of instructional cores and adding instructional staff across their systems, while maintaining some school-level flexibility; (2) supporting existing staff to become teachers and "building the bench" of new principals, while also promoting school leaders and administrators from within; (3) spending federal pandemic-relief money Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) and other supplements, while hoping to avoid cutting into funding for instruction; (4) insulating schools as much as possible by taking the political hits themselves and making concessions to demanding stakeholders; and (5) confronting continued enrollment declines, limited central office capacity, constrained teacher labor markets, changes in school boards, shifting local interests, and uncertain state-level financial support. The strong leadership modeled in both districts remains at the heart of moving forward, despite the fact they are straining against their capacities. While there may be nuanced differences, all leaders in maxed-out districts will have to search for new options and forge alliances with new partners within school boards, unions, and state-level governments. This project is part of the American School District Panel (ASDP), a research partnership between the RAND Corporation and the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.

This First Look report presents data on public elementary and secondary education revenues and expenditures at the local education agency (LEA) or school district level for fiscal year (FY) 2022. Specifically, this report includes the following types of school district finance data: (1) revenue, current expenditure, and capital outlay expenditure totals; (2) revenues by source; (3) current expenditures by function and object; (4) revenues and current expenditures per pupil; and (5) revenues and expenditures from COVID-19 Federal Assistance Funds. This First Look report focuses on education revenues and expenditures at the school district level. The finance data used in this report are from the School District Finance Survey (F-33), 2F 3 a component of the Common Core of Data (CCD). The CCD is a group of annual public elementary/secondary data collections administered by NCES. The F-33 survey consists of LEA-level finance data submitted annually to the U.S. Census Bureau (Census Bureau) by state education agencies (SEAs) in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. SEAs report financial data covering services that provide or support prekindergarten through high school for public education for a variety of types of LEAs. These LEAs include regular school districts, independent charter school districts, as well as a substantial number of administrative and operating LEAs that are unlike typical school districts (e.g., education service agencies that provide specialized education services for school districts, such as vocational and other specialized education services for school districts). The purpose of this First Look report is to introduce new data through the presentation of tables containing descriptive information. The selected findings chosen for this report demonstrate the range of information available when using F-33 data files and are not intended to emphasize any particular issue(s).

Teachers of color often work in schools with few colleagues from the same racial or ethnic background. This "racial isolation" may affect their work experiences and important job outcomes, including retention. Using longitudinal administrative and survey data, we investigate the degree to which Tennessee teachers who are more racially isolated are more likely to turn over. Accounting for other factors, we find that racially isolated Black teachers are more likely to leave their schools than less isolated teachers. This turnover is driven by transfers to a different district and exiting the profession altogether. Consistent with an explanation that isolated teachers' work experiences differ, they also report less collaboration with colleagues and receive lower observation scores.

In many parts of the country, enrollment in traditional public schools has fallen to its lowest point in decades. However, states, cities, and school districts have been slow to respond to the reality of empty desks. This report examines trends in school enrollment, focusing on several of America's most populous cities, as well as the budgetary and staffing responses to those trends. It also examines the states where these large cities are located. Key findings include: (1) New York, Illinois, and California experienced the largest declines in enrollment between 2013 and 2022, while Texas and Arizona had the largest increase in enrollment; (2) Texas will soon surpass California with the most public school students; (3) In California's two biggest cities, Los Angeles and San Diego, enrollments fell between 2013 and 2022; (4) Philadelphia experienced a decline in enrollment that mirrored overall statewide trends; (5) Although Texas experienced a strong uptick in student enrollment statewide, its four biggest cities--Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and Austin--all experienced slight declines over the last decade; (6) Costs per student rose between 2013 and 2022 in New York City, Houston, San Diego, Dallas, Austin, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Antonio, and Los Angeles; and (7) Total staff increased in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Dallas over the 2013-22 period.

Students, families, and communities across Chicago are affected by gun violence, but the levels and experiences differ greatly by location and by the racial composition of communities. In Chicago, recent rates of violence rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, and then declined to pre-pandemic levels in 2022. Still, there were more than 4,000 gun-related injuries reported to the Chicago Police Department in 2020 and in 2021, and homicides in the city rose in tandem. While overall rates of violence have fallen from peaks in the late 1990s in predominantly White and Latinx communities, rates of violence in Chicago's predominantly Black communities have exceeded 1990s levels in recent years. Of the 725 homicides reported in Chicago in 2022, 541 victims were Black, more than 18 times as many as were White. Proximity to violence and homicide remain profoundly racialized in Chicago. This mixed-methods study explores four interconnected research questions, specifically examining the particular role schools may play in the lives of students living in proximity to violence in Chicago: (1) What is the extent, distribution, and impact of living in close geographical proximity to violence on CPS students' performance in schools? (2) To what extent is there evidence that CPS schools can insulate or protect students from the negative consequences on academic and behavioral outcomes of living in close proximity to violence, so as to support students' health and wellness? (3) What elements of school climate and organization are characteristic of schools that appear to protect students against the negative impacts of proximity to violence on academic and behavioral outcomes? and (4) How do adults working in schools that insulate students from the impact of living in close proximity to violence understand and describe their work?

This manuscript explores the argument for lower student-to-school counselor ratios in U.S. public education. Drawing upon a comprehensive historical review and existing research, we establish the integral role of school counselors and the notable benefits of reduced student-to-counselor ratios. Our analysis of national data exposes marked disparities across states and districts, with the most underfunded often serving higher percentages of low-income students and students of color. This situation raises significant ethical concerns, prompting a call for conscientious policy reform and targeted investment. Informed by emerging best practices, we propose recommendations for enhancing counselor staffing and ultimately student outcomes. This ethical argument underscores the need for proactive actions and provides a basis for future research to further delineate the impact of school counselor ratios on educational equity and student success.

National context: Schools across the United States have long grappled with the role and impact of school-based police officers, often referred to as school resource officers (SROs). Proponents for school-based policing believe that SROs contribute to school safety by preventing or addressing crime and violence in schools. Opponents of SROs in schools argue that the presence of SROs criminalizes students and increases the likelihood of school-based arrest, particularly for students of color. Policies around SROs vary in districts across the country. Chicago context: In the wake of George Floyd's murder in 2020, the Chicago Board of Education (CBOE) asked the district to develop a plan to phase-out the SRO program, which assigned two SROs to most Chicago Public Schools (CPS) high schools. In February 2024, the CBOE voted to remove all remaining SROs from schools starting in 2024-25. In May 2024, CPS proposed a Whole School Safety Policy that did not include SROs and focused on supports for physical safety, emotional safety, and relational trust in schools. The research: This brief examines what happened when Chicago Public Schools (CPS) began the process of removing School Resource Officers (SROs) from its high schools during the 2020-21 school year. These findings can inform conversations in Chicago, and across the country, about SROs and whole school safety practices and policies--while recognizing that questions about the presence of police and the experience of safety in schools are complex and reflect differences in lived experiences and perspectives across policymakers, practitioners, young people, families, and communities. The findings are part of a larger, ongoing study by researchers from the UChicago Consortium; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Lurie Children's Hospital's Center for Childhood Resilience. [This research brief received additional support from the Pritzker-Pucker Family Foundation and the Consortium Investor Council.]

The North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (NDDPI) uses a three-pillar approach to school renewal efforts: build relationships, cultivate opportunity, and inspire growth. A key product of this approach is the North Dakota School Renewal Guide, which includes practitioner-friendly school improvement strategies grounded in evidence-based improvement practices for schools identified as Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) or Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI). The guide, now in its third edition, is updated annually based on feedback from the NDDPI, the North Dakota Regional Education Association (REA), and the TSI and CSI schools and districts using the guide. This report tells the story of how the NDDPI project team created and tested a calibration activity to increase inter-rater reliability ratings among REA staff, NDDPI representatives, and schools. By using procedures for consistent and accurate ratings, REA liaisons can provide schools with tailored coaching to support their improvement journeys, help schools track progress on goals and initiatives, and help schools collect the evidence required for them to exit TSI and CSI status. The report is intended as a resource for school leaders working to implement short-cycle school improvement goals.

Each year, over a thousand public schools in the US close due to declining enrollments and chronic low performance, displacing hundreds of thousands of students. Using Texas administrative data and empirical strategies that use within-student across-time and within-school across-cohort variation, I explore the impact of school closures on students' educational and labor market outcomes. The findings indicate that experiencing school closures results in disruptions in both test scores and behavior. While the drop in test scores is recovered within three years, behavioral issues persist. This study further finds decreases in post-secondary education attainment, employment, and earnings at ages 25-27. These impacts are particularly pronounced among students in secondary education, Hispanic students, and those from originally low-performing schools and economically disadvantaged families.

We investigate the beginning of the school discipline pipeline using a reform in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools that limited the use of out-of-school suspension for students in grades K-2. We find that the reform reduced the likelihood of out-of-school suspension by 1.4 percentage points (56%) and had precise null effects on test scores and disciplinary infractions. This leads us to reject a key argument in favor of early-grade suspensions: namely, that early-grade suspensions improve classroom-level outcomes. For high-risk students, we find short-run increases in test scores that persist into third grade. The reform reduced the Black-white out-of-school suspension gap by 79%. [Author Sarah Komisarow received funding from the Duke University Office of the Provost for this work.]

Among the many inequalities associated with racial segregation in schools, one notable disparity is the unequal access to experienced teachers. Schools with high proportions of Black or Latinx students have a disproportionate share of inexperienced teachers, both throughout the nation and in California specifically (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Clifton, 2023; Darling-Hammond, 2004; Goldhaber, Lavery, & Theobald, 2015; Knight, 2019; Learning Policy Institute, 2023; Shields et al., 1999). State-level policies and analyses in California have addressed the racial distribution of teacher experience, including the State's release of three annual reports in 2015, 2016, and 2017 titled, "California State Plan to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators." This study analyzes seven years of the most recent publicly available data from California's public schools, focusing on the relationship between student race and teacher experience. The authors categorized teacher experience in various ways: identifying teachers as "novices" based on 1, 2, or 3 years of teaching experience, and calculating the average and median years of experience at each school. Segregation was assessed from multiple angles by grouping schools based on their racial composition in six different ways, including categories such as "majority non-white" and "90% or more underrepresented minorities" that measure varying degrees of racial concentration. It also presents a regression model to investigate whether the relationship between teacher experience and racial composition holds when taking into account other variables, such as poverty status. The multiple ways of assessing the relationship all point to a discouraging conclusion: California continues to maintain a system of segregated schools that are separate and unequal in terms of teacher experience. The remainder of this report details and provides context for these findings. It concludes with a discussion of several possible ways to address the inequitable distribution of teacher experience in California.

May 17, 2024 marks the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled segregated schools were "inherently unequal." At the time, North Carolina was one of 17 states that enforced de jure segregation, that is, segregation by law. The state of North Carolina and the school districts within the state have played prominent roles in our nation's history of school desegregation. North Carolina's public school enrollment is increasingly multiracial, and the expansion of school choice means that a growing share of students attends charters and private schools, both of which tend to be more segregated than traditional public schools. On the cusp of this important anniversary, the authors assess where North Carolina schools are now in terms of school desegregation, as segregated schools are systematically linked to unequal educational opportunities and outcomes, while desegregated schools are associated with numerous short-term, long-term, academic, and nonacademic outcomes for individuals and society.