Arizona digs into data to help students with disabilities. Other states should follow suit.
This commentary is a response to the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s State of the American Student project, an effort launched in fall 2022 to track and report on pandemic recovery and school reimagining efforts over the next five years. With two years of year-end assessment data in our hands, state leaders know that the impact of […]
‘Avoid hearing screams:’ More than 40% of district leaders are managing debates over CRT. Their tactics could help ease tensions over AP African American Studies.
The debate over how schools should teach about race heightened this week when the College Board released a framework for a new Advanced Placement course in African-American studies that reduced some of the content from a pilot version — content supported by hundreds of Black scholars and progressives but criticized by prominent conservatives. The national fervor over the content of […]
A review: What we learned after 3 years of studying charters in Washington state
The pandemic prompted major shifts in public school enrollment and models for learning in the Pacific Northwest and across the nation. After three years, our study of these effects on Washington state’s charter schools has generated a number of important findings, which we invite you to explore now that our project has ended. We sought […]
Black education leaders: Leaving public schools can help save our kids
For Black children, the public education system is like a dirty fish tank. They’re swimming in toxic conditions like discriminatory discipline and low expectations. But before the water can be treated, those students need to be moved to a clean bowl where they can live and breathe. Then, it’s time to clean out the tank. […]
What do Washington parents think about their students’ charter schools?
In 2014, the first public charter schools opened in Washington state. The development led to years of controversy, but the debates often bypassed the opinions of people with important experience: parents of enrolled students. To begin to remedy this, we conducted a mixed-methods study that asked parents how they selected their student’s charter school, how […]
Can districts rise to the challenge of new NAEP results? Outlook’s not so good
If schools & families revert to pre-pandemic habits, millions of kids may never recover lost knowledge and skills.
Back to school, but not caught up: After school reopenings, administrators eager to tackle learning loss continue to face challenges
In this report, we update our ongoing research on five school systems to reveal the academic, social, and political challenges posed by the pandemic and what system leaders and their staff are doing to address student learning loss. The report is part of the American School District Panel, a research partnership between the RAND Corporation […]
The State of the American Student: Fall 2022
This report draws on data the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has collected and synthesized over the course of the pandemic. It outlines the contours of the crisis American students faced during the Covid-19 pandemic and begins to chart a path to recovery and reinvention for all students—which includes the essential work of building a new […]
Education reform that sticks
Public education depends on expertise, work, money, and cooperation from multiple actors who have different interests and beliefs. These lead to competition and negotiation—in other words, politics. Failure to consider the politics of reform implementation and sustainability has doomed many promising K–12 school improvement initiatives. This paper analyzes more than 10 years of data on […]
