ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Expanding Access to High-Performing Charter Schools
Author: National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA)
Date: 2021-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Charter Schools,High Achievement,State Policy,Institutional Characteristics,Educational Quality,Public Schools,Barriers,Enrollment,Comparative Analysis,Policy Analysis,Accreditation (Institutions),Access to Education,Decision Making,Institutional Evaluation

The need for more quality public schools for U.S. children is as great as ever. One policy solution to help meet this demand is to grow more of what is already working. To expand access to existing high-quality charter schools, policymakers and authorizers remove barriers and make it easier to grow enrollment and expand locations. Behind every charter school is an authorizer--and its responsibilities are essential to growing more great charter schools around the country. How can state policies help authorizers meet their communities' need for more great public schools? This brief compares the policies that govern high-performing charter schools in three states with a variety of authorizing contexts--Florida, Missouri, and Louisiana--to provide examples for other states to consider.
Putting an End to Authorizer Shopping
Author: Doyle, Daniela
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Charter Schools,Institutional Autonomy,Public Schools,Accountability,School Closing,State Policy,State Standards,State Legislation,Decision Making,Power Structure,School Business Relationship

The public charter school movement is premised on the exchange of increased autonomy for increased accountability. Individual schools are given more flexibility in their actions, and then must meet agreed-upon benchmarks of quality. If a school fails to fulfill the terms of its charter or achieve its stated goals, it can be closed. However, charter schools that are identified for closure do not always shut their doors. Even as charter school authorizers have become more adept at evaluating school performance and enforcing accountability, some schools have tried to avoid closure altogether. One way that schools evade closure is through authorizer shopping: when a struggling school transfers to a new authorizer to avoid accountability. Experience shows that authorizer shopping is a threat to a state's overall charter school quality if even one authorizer is willing and able to accept failing schools. This report discusses the problem of authorizer shopping, and offers recommendations on how to prevent it.
Federal Student Aid Fiscal Year 2020 through 2024 Strategic Plan
Author: Federal Student Aid (ED)
Date: 2020-12-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Strategic Planning,Student Financial Aid,Student Loan Programs,Loan Repayment,Paying for College,Information Security,COVID-19,Pandemics,Educational Change,Program Evaluation,Access to Education,Educational Finance,Federal Legislation,Federal Aid,Educational Trends,Futures (of Society),Program Effectiveness,Partnerships in Education,Progress Monitoring,Postsecondary Education

The Federal Student Aid's (FSA's) Five-Year Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2020-24 (Five-Year Plan) establishes ambitious goals and objectives to ensure that FSA continues to provide access to higher education regardless of one's past educational experiences or socioeconomic status. This Five-Year Plan was informed by public comments; focus groups with students and borrowers; and engagement sessions with FSA employees, postsecondary schools, and higher education organizations. The strategic goals, objectives, and metrics in this plan will allow FSA to successfully implement Next Gen FSA--an initiative to streamline student aid systems, strengthen cybersecurity, and save taxpayer dollars by making FSA operations more efficient--while strengthening oversight of FSA's vendors, institutions, and extended workforce. Not only will the Five-Year Plan increase external oversight, it will also improve FSA's own accountability to their stakeholders. FSA is committed to continuing effective outreach, conducting ongoing evaluations, and fostering innovation through collaboration. The 2020-24 plan discusses the following strategic goals: (1) Empower a High-Performing Organization; (2) Provide World-Class Customer Experience to the Students, Parents, and Borrowers We Serve; (3) Increase Partner Engagement and Oversight Effectiveness; (4) Strengthen Data Protection and Cybersecurity Safeguards; and (5) Enhance the Management and Transparency of the Portfolio. The finalized plan comes after a 30-day public comment period that ended October 23, 2020. All comments were referred to the relevant business areas for consideration and the strategic plan was revised based on feedback received during the public comment period. The impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency and recently enacted legislation on strategic plan performance measures and annual targets for future fiscal years will be further assessed as the full extent of the implications on FSA operations and customers is not yet known. [For the 2015-19 report, see ED593266.]
The &quot;Prospective&quot; Teacher Pipeline: Simulation Evidence on Levers to Influence Teacher Diversity. Research Brief. CALDER Policy Brief No. 28-1121
Author: Goldhaber, Dan
Date: 2021-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Diversity (Faculty),Grade 12,Teacher Certification,Teacher Education,Higher Education,Teacher Selection,Public School Teachers,Minority Group Teachers,Preservice Teachers,High School Graduates,College Graduates,Teacher Persistence,Racial Differences,Ethnicity,Enrollment

In this research brief, the authors present evidence on how the diversity of the teacher workforce changes as &quot;prospective&quot; teachers advance through the teacher pipeline: tracking from 12th grade students as some obtain the education and certifications required to be eligible to teach in public schools, and some apply to and are hired into public schools. The authors are not the first to examine the teacher pipeline in this way (e.g., see, Putman et al., 2016), but they advance the literature by incorporating increased (and more recent) knowledge about how changes in the demographics of individuals who advance through different junctures or &quot;nodes&quot; in the pipeline (e.g., graduating high school and college, taking required teacher licensure exams, etc.) affect the diversity of the teacher workforce. This technique is used to simulate how changes in the likelihood that different demographic groups advance through the pipeline would be expected to affect the diversity of the early teacher workforce.
School Life: Official Organ of the Office of Education, United States Department of the Interior. Volume XXI. September 1935-June 1936
Author: Boutwell, William Dow, Ed.
Date: 1937-00-00
Type: Historical Materials
Subjects: Educational Legislation,Federal Legislation,Education,Foreign Countries,Organizations (Groups),Intellectual Disciplines,Educational Theories,Citizenship,Books,Educational Finance

This document contains the September 1935 through June 1936 issues of &quot;School Life,&quot; a monthly publication of the U.S. Department of the Interior Office of Education. The journal issues cover a variety of topics across education sectors, legislation before Congress, education finance, foreign schools and education systems, education association activities, education in disciplines, education theory, citizenship and public affairs, and new education books. A volume XXI index is included.
Predicting Reading Comprehension from Constructed Responses: Explanatory Retrievals as Stealth Assessment
Author: McCarthy, Kathryn S.
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Reading Comprehension,Prediction,Responses,College Students,Natural Language Processing,Content Area Reading,Student Evaluation,Automation,Artificial Intelligence

Open-ended &quot;constructed responses&quot; promote deeper processing of course materials. Further, evaluation of these explanations can yield important information about students' cognition. This study examined how students' constructed responses, generated at different points during learning, relate to their later comprehension outcomes. College students (N = 75) produced self-explanations &quot;during&quot; reading and explanatory retrievals &quot;after&quot; reading. The Constructed Response Assessment Tool (CRAT) was used to analyze these responses across multiple dimensions of language and relate these textual features to comprehension performance. Results indicate that the linguistic features of post-reading explanatory retrievals were more predictive of comprehension outcomes than self-explanations. Further, these models relied on different indices to predict performance. [This paper was published in: I. I. Bittencourt et al. (Eds.), &quot;AIED 2020&quot; (pp. 197-202). Switzerland: Springer Nature.]
Multi-Document Cohesion Network Analysis: Automated Prediction of Inferencing across Multiple Documents
Author: Nicula, Bogdan
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Natural Language Processing,Taxonomy,Responses,Semantics,Reading Comprehension,Inferences,Classification,Task Analysis,Network Analysis,Connected Discourse,Prediction,Models,Accuracy,Questioning Techniques,Computational Linguistics,Psycholinguistics

Open-ended comprehension questions are a common type of assessment used to evaluate how well students understand one of multiple documents. Our aim is to use natural language processing (NLP) to infer the level and type of inferencing within readers' answers to comprehension questions using linguistic and semantic features within their responses. Our taxonomy considers three types of responses to comprehension questions from students (N = 146) who read four documents: a) &quot;textbase responses&quot; (i.e., information required for the answer is present in a contiguous short sequence of text); b) &quot;single-document inference responses&quot; (i.e., requiring information from multiple text segments in a single document); and c) &quot;multi-document inference responses&quot; (i.e., information spanning multiple documents is required). The classification task was approached in two ways. First, we extracted features from students' answers to the comprehension questions using linguistic and semantic indices related to textual complexity and an extended Cohesion Network Analysis (CNA) graph to assess semantic links between the answers and the reference documents. Second, we compared different Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) architectures that rely on word embeddings to encode both answers and reference documents. Our best model based on RNN's predicts the answer type with an accuracy of 81%.[This paper was published in: &quot;2020 IEEE 32nd International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI)&quot; (pp. 343-348). IEEE.]
Exemplary STEM Learning: Lessons from Outstanding New York Schools &amp; Teachers
Author: Eckert, Jonathan
Date: 2020-05-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Guides,STEM Education,School Visitation,Case Studies,Teaching Methods,Barriers,School Culture,Educational Innovation,Student Needs,Institutional Characteristics,High Schools,Middle Schools,Elementary Schools,Educational Resources,Educational Improvement,School Effectiveness,Excellence in Education

Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are approaches to help us to understand and improve the world. Therefore, as a country, we need to develop more STEM literate citizens through exemplary STEM learning in schools. This report asks four questions that are answered through five case studies: (1) What is exemplary STEM learning?; (2) What conditions support exemplary STEM learning?; (3) How does the collective leadership of teachers and administrators facilitate exemplary STEM learning?; and (4) What are the barriers to exemplary STEM learning? After analyzing survey data, interviews, focus groups, and site visits to five schools, this research found that schools with strong STEM cultures are more likely to improve by innovating to meet the needs of their students and communities. [This report was funded by 100Kin10. For the related report, &quot;Exemplary STEM Learning: Lessons from Outstanding New York Schools &amp; Teachers. Teacher Leader Fellowship Toolkit,&quot; see ED616151.]
Exemplary STEM Learning: Lessons from Outstanding New York Schools &amp; Teachers. Teacher Leader Fellowship Toolkit
Author: Eckert, Jonathan
Date: 2020-05-00
Type: Collected Works - General
Subjects: STEM Education,Teacher Leadership,Educational Practices,Teacher Attitudes,Action Research,Teaching Methods,Specialists,Fellowships,Teacher Effectiveness,Kindergarten,Elementary Secondary Education,School Districts,Interdisciplinary Approach,Student Projects,Active Learning,Excellence in Education,Mathematics Teachers,Science Teachers,Barriers,Technology Uses in Education,Authentic Learning,Public Officials,Superintendents,Cooperation,Access to Education,Instructional Leadership,Guides

Research can be a powerful tool in education, but it's an even more powerful tool when that research is created, implemented, and reflected upon by the education experts themselves--classroom teachers. This research mobilized a cadre of STEM teacher leaders to help unpack the overarching research question: How does the collective leadership of teachers and administrators facilitate exemplary STEM learning? These expert educators met monthly for 18 months, examined their practices grounded in the overarching research question, and implemented their own research in their individual contexts. Included in this report are two-page summaries of each Fellow's action research, containing findings and links to more detailed explanations. The authors encourage educators to read, share, and implement these ideas, helping to create the ideal STEM learning system. [This report was funded by 100Kin10. For the related report &quot;Exemplary STEM Learning: Lessons from Outstanding New York Schools &amp; Teachers,&quot; see ED616150.]
Ohio Department of Education&apos;s and Selected Virtual Charter Schools&apos; Internal Controls over Individualized Education Programs. ED-OIG/A03S0006
Author: Office of Inspector General (ED)
Date: 2021-03-01
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: State Departments of Education,Charter Schools,Virtual Schools,Individualized Education Programs,School Districts,National Standards,State Standards,Students with Disabilities,Special Education,Equal Education,Federal Legislation,Educational Legislation,Compliance (Legal),Delivery Systems

The audit objective for this report was to determine whether the Ohio Department of Education (Ohio Education) and selected Ohio local educational agencies (LEAs) have sufficient internal controls to ensure that individualized education programs (IEPs) are developed in accordance with Federal and State requirements for children with disabilities who attend virtual charter schools and that those students are provided with the services described in their IEPs. The audit period was July 1, 2017, through June 30, 2018. This audit is focused on services provided to students attending virtual charter schools during an audit period that preceded the COVID-19 pandemic. It addresses issues and requirements intended to ensure that special education and related services are provided in accordance with Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to students with disabilities in a virtual learning environment. 2 of 14 virtual charter schools in Ohio were selected, Tri-Rivers Educational Computer Association Digital Academy (TRECA) and Ohio Virtual Academy (Ohio Virtual), to include as a part of the audit. The scope was limited to services identified in IEPs that were provided to students with disabilities during the audit period. To accomplish the objective, relevant Federal and State laws, regulations, and guidance, and assessed Ohio Education's and selected virtual charter schools' internal controls over IEP development and service delivery were reviewed. A stratified random sample of 50 student files at each virtual charter school to assess whether they developed IEPs in accordance with Federal and State requirements and provided students with the services described in their IEPs were also reviewed.
Contextualising Space: Using Local Knowledge to Foster Students&apos; Location and Transformation Skills
Author: Harris, Danielle
Date: 2021-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Navigation,Geometry,Geographic Concepts,Geographic Location,Geographic Isolation,Foreign Countries,Map Skills,Spatial Ability,Elementary School Students,Grade 5,Schemata (Cognition),Familiarity,Memory

&quot;Location and Transformation&quot; skills are critical tools for navigating the world and establishing foundational steps for geometric reasoning associated with co-ordinate grids and the Cartesian plane. The contextual nature of using local landmarks to understand students' mental representation of large-scale space has the potential to enhance these skills. This paper examines a classroom activity that draws on students' local knowledge when representing their environment. Factors such as geographic distance and isolation, and incorporation of spatial relations are explored. Recommendations are made for educators to incorporate the sophisticated local knowledge when building mathematical understanding.
Pennsylvania Department of Education&apos;s and Selected Virtual Charter Schools&apos; Internal Controls over Individualized Education Programs. ED-OIG/A02T0004
Author: Office of Inspector General (ED)
Date: 2020-12-02
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: State Departments of Education,Virtual Schools,Charter Schools,Accountability,Individualized Education Programs,Standards,Students with Disabilities,Delivery Systems,Compliance (Legal),Program Evaluation

The audit objective for this report was to determine whether the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PA Education) and selected Pennsylvania local educational agencies have sufficient internal controls to ensure that individualized education programs (IEP) are developed in accordance with Federal and State requirements for children with disabilities who attend virtual charter schools and that those students are provided with the services described in their IEPs. The audit period was July 1, 2017, through June 30, 2018. This audit is focused on services provided to students attending virtual charter schools during an audit period that preceded the COVID-19 pandemic and addresses issues and requirements intended to ensure that special education and related services are provided in accordance with Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to students with disabilities in a virtual learning environment. 2 of 15 virtual charter schools in Pennsylvania were selected, Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School and Commonwealth Charter Academy, to include as a part of the audit. The scope was limited to services provided to students with disabilities during the audit period. To accomplish the objective, relevant Federal and State laws, regulations, and guidance, and assessed PA Education's and selected virtual charter schools' internal controls over IEP development and service delivery were reviewed. A stratified random sample of 50 student files at each virtual charter school to assess whether they developed IEPs in accordance with Federal and State requirements and provided students with the services described in their IEPs were also reviewed.
Curriculum Development and the Use of a Digital Framework for Collaborative Design to Inform Discourse: A Case Study
Author: Jameson, Ellen
Date: 2021-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Mathematics Instruction,National Curriculum,Secondary School Students,Grade 10,Statistics Education,Probability,Guidelines,Curriculum Development,Mathematics Curriculum,Foreign Countries,International Cooperation,Case Studies,Educational Change,Formative Evaluation,Decision Making,Universities,Public Agencies,Educational Cooperation,Information Technology

This paper reports on a new initiative of collaborative work between the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and Cambridge University as part of the 2020-21 review of the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics Foundation -- Year 10. The ACARA mathematics curriculum development team worked with the Cambridge Mathematics team using the Cambridge Mathematics Framework, which incorporates summaries of the research literature, to inform the review of Statistics and Probability in the mathematics curriculum as part of ACARA's program of research.
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools 2020 Annual Report: The Time Is Now
Author: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
Date: 2021-03-08
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Charter Schools,Public Schools,Educational History,COVID-19,Pandemics,Coping,Educational Finance,Financial Support,Access to Computers,Barriers,Student Needs,Student Diversity,Minority Groups,Teachers,Low Income Students,African American Students,Parent Role,Geographic Location,Governance,School Closing,Distance Education,Online Courses,Equal Education,Racial Bias,Racial Differences,Access to Education,Rural Schools,Legal Responsibility,Court Litigation,Educational Quality,Conferences (Gatherings),Partnerships in Education,Advocacy

2020 was a historically challenging year that will be remembered for generations to come. There were various challenges that impacted not just the charter school movement but the entire country. This annual report provides a timeline of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools' 15 years of progress, shares charter school facts, and provides information on how the National Alliance secured important resources for charter schools and students, withstood intense policy pressure to maintain funding for the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP), and supported existing charter schools during the pandemic. The report also highlights 2020 publications, the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Charter Schools Virtual Conference, the 2021-2023 Strategic Plan, and major supporters, the board of directors, and National Alliance staff. [For the 2019 annual report, see ED613016.]
Promoting School Nurses as Leaders in Reopening Schools. Policy Update. Vol. 28, No. 3
Author: Norville, Valerie
Date: 2021-08-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: School Nurses,Role,COVID-19,Pandemics,School Closing,State Policy,Federal Aid,Federal Legislation,Elementary Secondary Education,Wellness

School nurses have always shouldered wide-ranging clinical and care coordination responsibilities, to which the pandemic added quarantine management, staff training in proper use of protective equipment, and contact tracing. As trusted figures in their communities, school nurses also are--or could be--valuable partners for state boards of education and other state stakeholders in forming guidance around safe school return. This policy update discusses the role of school nurses, school nursing policies, and leveraging federal funds for school nursing.
State Strategies on Assessments in 2021. Policy Update. Vol. 28, No. 2
Author: Potts, Abigail
Date: 2021-07-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: State Policy,Educational Policy,State Boards of Education,Student Evaluation,COVID-19,Pandemics,Accountability,Standardized Tests,Elementary Secondary Education

When the U.S. Department of Education (ED) signaled that the broad waivers for state assessments it had offered in 2019-20 would not be widely offered in 2021, it sought to balance the need for student learning data to inform pandemic recovery with the very real operational challenges states face in administering tests this year. This policy update discusses assessment flexibility and waivers, waiving state assessment policies, communicating about assessments, and long term implications for assessment.