ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
State of Kansas: K-12 Enrollment Projection Report
Author: Carter, Ted
Date: 2015-01-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Enrollment Trends,Statistical Data,Instructional Program Divisions,Race,Ethnicity,Lunch Programs,Eligibility,Demography,Census Figures,Special Education,Tables (Data)

This document contains headcount enrollment projections for the State of Kansas for the 2015-16 school year through the 2019-20 school year. These projections are based on resident live births in Kansas and the headcount enrollment data for previous school years. Based on the available data related to resident live births by county and previous school year enrollments, student enrollment in Kansas is expected to increase from approximately 526,000 students in 2014-15 to approximately 562,000 students in 2019-20. Trends by grade level and program participation are expected to be consistent with previous years. The following are appended: (1) Methodology; (2) Additional Charts and Tables; and (3) Census Data.
Making Michigan Right-to-Work: Implementation Problems in Public Schools
Author: Spalding, Audrey
Date: 2014-09-03
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Collective Bargaining,Contracts,Labor Legislation,State Legislation,Employees,School Districts,Compliance (Legal),Teachers

This paper examines how public school districts responded to Michigan's 2012 &quot;right-to-work&quot; law. It describes the key findings from reviews of more than 500 teacher collective bargaining agreements. It also raises several questions about the legality of some union contracts with regard to this new law. Approximately 75 percent of districts with contracts subject to the right-to-work law removed language that would require employees to financially support a union as a condition of employment. Both legal and policy questions are raised by the remaining 25 percent of districts, which kept mandatory dues language in one way or another, despite having a contract that took effect or was modified after the law's effective date. The study describes five issues with these contracts. Twenty-three contracts made no apparent changes and kept mandatory dues language. Eight districts created a separate agreement to require mandatory dues payment. Fifteen contracts were ratified before they would be subject to the right-to-work law, but then didn't take effect until much later. Five contracts made only the mandatory dues language immediately effective, while delaying the rest of the contract. Finally, at least six districts have modified parts of their contract without making the rest of it compliant with the right-to-work law
Michigan's Top-to-Bottom Ranking: A Measure of School Quality or Student Poverty?
Author: Spalding, Audrey
Date: 2013-10-10
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Institutional Characteristics,Educational Quality,Poverty,Elementary Schools,Correlation,Low Income Groups,Scores,Low Achievement,School Choice,Accountability,Evaluation Methods,Financial Support,Charter Schools,School Districts,Geographic Location,Barriers

This study examines the state's &quot;Top-to-Bottom&quot; ranking, which has been repeatedly criticized by educators for appearing to be correlated with school poverty rates. Mackinac Center research finds that schools that serve more lower-income students tend to receive lower scores on the TTB list. These results matters because TTB rankings are used to impose consequences on low-ranking schools. This study suggests that Michigan should look at how other states rank schools in an attempt to reduce the likelihood of penalizing schools that serve lower-income students. It also makes the case that a choice-based accountability system is preferred, as it would allow students to escape schools that are not serving their needs and reduce the risk of penalizing undeservedly low-ranked schools. Data sources are appended.
Streamline and Improve the Targeting of Education Tax Benefits
Author: Institute for College Access & Success
Date: 2014-06-09
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Outcomes of Education,Investment,Higher Education,Taxes,Tuition,Tax Credits,Student Financial Aid,Grants,Incentive Grants

This one-page document presents The Institute for College Access &amp; Success' (TICAS') recommendations for ways to improve the targeting of higher education tax benefits. The TICAS white paper, &quot;Aligning the Means and the Ends: How to Improve Federal Student Aid and Increase College Access and Success,&quot; recommends almost entirely eliminating higher-education tax benefits and redirecting the savings into Pell Grants and incentive funds for states and colleges. However, if such tax benefits are to be retained, TICAS recommends: (1) dramatically streamlining higher education tax benefits; (2) stop taxing forgiven or discharged student loans as income; and (3) stop taxing Pell Grants as income if they are used for a qualified education expense.
Return on Investment in Education: A &quot;System-Strategy&quot; Approach
Author: Frank, Stephen
Date: 2014-10-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Investment,Outcomes of Education,Educational Strategies,Systems Approach,Student Needs,Educational Resources,Needs Assessment,Strategic Planning,Educational Opportunities,Cost Effectiveness,Performance Factors,Resource Allocation,Decision Making,Academic Achievement,Educational Objectives,Alignment (Education),Educational Planning,Educational Improvement,Educational Change,Change Strategies

Recently, there has been growing interest in adapting Return-on-Investment thinking to education--sometimes called educational productivity, or academic-ROI. Education leaders do not seek a monetary return on their spending, rather greater student learning, or other outcomes like student citizenship, higher graduation rates, or increased lifetime earnings and career options. Most ROI analysis misses a big opportunity; it is often used to evaluate programs and initiatives, such as comparing two professional development programs. This process leaves out some of the biggest cost drivers in the district's budget and never addresses some of the fundamental resource issues that may actually drive student success. Education leaders need a new approach--a System-Strategy ROI. This approach starts with a fundamental student need and asks not &quot;Which program is better?&quot; but &quot;What resources will meet this need?&quot; School system leaders can help their teams take a System-Strategy ROI approach by structuring the planning conversation around five key steps: (1) Identify the core need: What fundamental student performance need are we focusing on, and what's our theory of change for addressing it?; (2) Consider a broad range of investment options: What are the investments we currently make to address this need, and what else could we do?; (3) Define ROI metrics and gather data: What are the relative returns (costs weighed against benefits) to the set of current/potential options?; (4) Weigh investment options: What other factors do we need to consider, in order to select from among the options?; and (5) Make investment decisions: How can we free resources to do what we want to do? It is important to note that ROI--in any form--is not a magic formula, but the System-Strategy approach is a powerful tool for adding structure, rigor, and data-backed evidence to the difficult decisions a school system must make on behalf of its students. Ultimately, the fundamental question we must ask is, &quot;How can we use all our limited resources strategically to improve student achievement and meet our goals?&quot; This document guides districts toward the goal of aligning school system resources to strategic priorities so that every school succeeds for every student.
ResourceCheck: Assess Your District's Resource Use
Author: Education Resource Strategies
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Tests/Questionnaires
Subjects: Urban Schools,School Districts,Resource Allocation,High Achievement,Educational Strategies,Alignment (Education),Educational Finance,Educational Equity (Finance),Student Needs,Instructional Effectiveness,Teacher Effectiveness,Instructional Design,Educational Assessment,Professional Development,Leadership,Capacity Building,Empowerment,Accountability,Efficiency,Partnerships in Education,Family Involvement,Community Involvement,Questionnaires

For over a decade, Education Resource Strategies, Inc. (ERS) has helped leaders of urban school districts strategically reallocate their resources to improve student performance. This work identifies seven Core Transformational Strategies that support high-performing schools; in high-functioning districts, resources (people, time, and money) are aligned to support these strategies. The Core Transformational Strategies include: (1) School Funding: Ensure equitable, transparent, and flexible funding across schools adjusted for student need; (2) Teaching: Restructure teaching to foster individual and team effectiveness and professional growth; (3) School Design: Support schools in organizing talent, time, and money to maximize learning; (4) Instructional Support: Ensure access to aligned curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development; (5) Leadership: Build school and district leader capacity; (6) Central Services: Redesign central roles for empowerment, accountability, and efficiency; and (7) Partnerships: Partner with families and communities. This questionnaire is designed to enhance understanding how well the resources in a district are aligned to support these Transformational Strategies. Instructions for how to use the questionnaire and interpret the results are included.
Spinning Straw into Gold: How State Education Agencies Can Transform Their Data to Improve Critical School Resource Decisions
Author: Frank, Stephen
Date: 2014-12-00
Type: Tests/Questionnaires
Subjects: State Agencies,School Districts,Elementary Secondary Education,Resource Allocation,Decision Making,Data Analysis,Student Needs,Intervention,Accountability,Reports,Staff Utilization,Information Utilization,Data Collection,Government Role

K-12 education resources are often allocated non-strategically, with schools spending time and money on activities that have little relationship to student outcomes. Most of these decisions take place within districts, rooted in the processes of setting schedules, staffing levels, and assignments, and creating final budgets. Local Education Agencies (LEAs) could dramatically improve their resource allocation by better analyzing data on how people, time, and money are used through the district, and looking for ways to better match student needs. To do that, districts have to link specific student needs to specific school interventions, and that requires merging and reconciling a range of data sets. Most LEAs do not make this investment, but State Education Agencies (SEAs) can and do. States already use this kind of data to create public accountability reports or inform research or policy, but not typically to support local decisions. As such, they are sitting on a veritable gold mine of untapped material that could be used to support LEA resource decisions. By aiding local decision-makers to be more strategic, SEAs could help reallocate resources across the state without introducing a single mandate. In this paper, and an accompanying detailed appendix, we look at key decision-making processes that largely determine how people, time and money are used in LEAs. And for each process, we identify questions and metrics where the strategic use of state data would help school and district leaders make better resource decisions. The following is appended: Sample Questions and Decision-Support Metrics.
Promoting Innovation to Improve College Access and Completion. Testimony Submitted to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance
Author: Mayer, Alexander K.
Date: 2015-09-11
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Innovation,Access to Education,College Preparation,Advisory Committees,Student Financial Aid,Hearings,Work Study Programs,Finance Reform,Academic Achievement,Graduation Rate,Evaluation Research,Educational Opportunities,Financial Needs,Change Strategies,College Students,Program Improvement,School Holding Power,Academic Persistence

Access to college has increased substantially over the last 50 years, but student success--defined as the combination of academic success and degree or certificate completion--has not kept pace. Student success, moreover, generally correlates with students' financial resources: Students from high-income families attend and complete college at higher rates than low-income students. There have been marked successes in college access since the passage of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which extended need-based financial assistance to the general population for the first time. Given the size of the financial aid system ($226 billion), renewed attention to innovations in financial aid could lead to improvements in student success. However, it is challenging to determine whether financial aid does in fact improve student success, because the factors associated with financial need, such as low family income, are also associated with a lack of academic success, making it difficult to isolate the effect of additional financial aid on student achievement. Using randomized controlled trials helps overcome this challenge. MDRC and other researchers have partnered with institutions across the country to conduct large, randomized controlled trials of innovations in financial aid, demonstrating that financial aid innovations and rigorous research can be effectively paired to produce reliable, useful evidence. They recommend encouraging financial aid innovation paired with evaluation research, especially randomized controlled trials. This testimony focuses on: (1) Year-round financial aid; (2) Federal Work-Study and satisfactory academic progress requirements; and (3) Clarifying opportunities for innovation.
Regulating and Quality-Assuring VET: International Developments. Research Report
Author: Misko, Josie
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Vocational Education,Comparative Education,Quality Assurance,Educational Policy,Federal Regulation,Accreditation (Institutions),Standards,Industry,Educational Assessment,Performance Based Assessment,Educational Indicators,Educational Quality,Instructional Improvement,Accountability,Disclosure,Vocational Education Teachers,Teacher Effectiveness

The opening-up of the market for education and training, including vocational education and training (VET), has increased the importance of regulation and quality assurance mechanisms in ensuring the integrity of qualifications. This report investigates approaches to the regulation and quality assurance of vocational education and training in a number of countries: New Zealand, selected European member states (Finland, Sweden, United Kingdom), Canada (province of Ontario) and two accrediting agencies in the United States. The insights gained from this investigation into the practices applied overseas could be used to inform the development of VET regulatory and quality assurance approaches in Australia. Two appendices include: (1) a list of each standard in the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC) framework and the items they cover; and (2) tables documenting: Industry skills councils and industry covered as at June 2015; New Zealand industry training organisations, by industry sector, 2014; and Sector skills councils and sector skills bodies, by industry sector coverage in the United Kingdom.
Understanding the Effect of KIPP as It Scales: Volume I, Impacts on Achievement and Other Outcomes. Final Report of KIPP&apos;s &quot;Investing in Innovation Grant Evaluation&quot;
Author: Tuttle, Christina Clark
Date: 2015-09-17
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Program Effectiveness,Program Evaluation,Academic Achievement,Charter Schools,School Effectiveness,Effective Schools Research,Educational Assessment,Educational Indicators,Elementary Secondary Education,Statistical Significance,College Preparation,Academic Persistence,Academic Aspiration,College Readiness,Institutional Characteristics,Educational Innovation,Grants,Investment,Student Characteristics,Profiles,Graduation Rate,Bayesian Statistics,Educational Research,School Surveys,Grades (Scholastic),Tables (Data),Institutional Mission,Control Groups,Experimental Groups,Standardized Tests,Regression (Statistics),Scores,Clearinghouses

KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a national network of public charter schools whose stated mission is to help underserved students enroll in and graduate from college. Prior studies (see Tuttle et al. 2013) have consistently found that attending a KIPP middle school positively affects student achievement, but few have addressed longer-term outcomes and no rigorous research exists on impacts of KIPP schools at levels other than middle school. In this first high-quality study to rigorously examine the impacts of the network of KIPP public charter schools at all elementary and secondary grade levels, Mathematica found that KIPP schools have positive impacts on student achievement, particularly at the elementary and middle school levels. In addition, the study found positive impacts on student achievement for new entrants to the KIPP network in high school. For students continuing from a KIPP middle school, KIPP high schools' impacts on student achievement are not statistically significant, on average (in comparison to students who did not have the option to attend a KIPP high school and instead attended a mix of other non-KIPP charter, private, and traditional public high schools). Among these continuing students, KIPP high schools have positive impacts on several aspects of college preparation, including more discussions about college, increased likelihood of applying to college, and more advanced coursetaking. This report provides detailed findings and also includes the following appendices: (1) List of KIPP Schools In Network; (2) Detail on Survey Outcomes; (3) Cumulative Middle and High School Results; (4) Detailed Analytic Methods: Elementary School (Lottery-Based Analyses); (5) Detailed Analytic Methods: Middle School (Lottery-Based Analyses); (6) Understanding the Effects of KIPP As It Scales Mathematica Policy Research; (7) Detailed Analytic Methods: Middle School (Matched-Student Analyses); (8) Detailed Analytic Methods: High School (Matched-Student Analyses); (9) Detailed Analytic Methods: High School (Matched-School Analyses); and (10) Detailed Tables For What Works Clearinghouse Review. [For the executive summary, see ED560080; for the focus brief, see ED560043.]
Understanding the Effect of KIPP as It Scales: Volume I, Impacts on Achievement and Other Outcomes. Final Report of KIPP's Investing in Innovation Grant Evaluation. Executive Summary
Author: Tuttle, Christina Clark
Date: 2015-09-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Academic Achievement,Charter Schools,Educational Innovation,Institutional Characteristics,Student Characteristics,School Effectiveness,Statistical Significance,College Preparation,Academic Aspiration,Elementary Secondary Education,Educational Assessment,Educational Indicators,Program Effectiveness,Program Evaluation,Effective Schools Research,Academic Persistence,College Readiness,Grants,Investment,Profiles,Graduation Rate,Bayesian Statistics,Educational Research,School Surveys,Grades (Scholastic),Institutional Mission,Control Groups,Experimental Groups,Standardized Tests,Regression (Statistics),Scores

KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a national network of public charter schools whose stated mission is to help underserved students enroll in and graduate from college. Prior studies (see Tuttle et al. 2013) have consistently found that attending a KIPP middle school positively affects student achievement, but few have addressed longer-term outcomes and no rigorous research exists on impacts of KIPP schools at levels other than middle school. In this first high-quality study to rigorously examine the impacts of the network of KIPP public charter schools at all elementary and secondary grade levels, Mathematica found that KIPP schools have positive impacts on student achievement, particularly at the elementary and middle school levels. In addition, the study found positive impacts on student achievement for new entrants to the KIPP network in high school. For students continuing from a KIPP middle school, KIPP high schools' impacts on student achievement are not statistically significant, on average (in comparison to students who did not have the option to attend a KIPP high school and instead attended a mix of other non-KIPP charter, private, and traditional public high schools). Among these continuing students, KIPP high schools have positive impacts on several aspects of college preparation, including more discussions about college, increased likelihood of applying to college, and more advanced coursetaking. This executive summary presents key findings from the full report. [For the full report, see ED560079; for the focus brief, see ED560043.]
Reverse Transfer: What Is the Best Route to Take? ECS Promising Practices in Education
Author: Anderson, Lexi
Date: 2015-09-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Reverse Transfer Students,Transfer Policy,State Policy,Outcomes of Education,College Transfer Students,Program Implementation,Associate Degrees,Program Administration,Technology Uses in Education,Financial Support,Educational Finance,Communication Strategies,Identification

As states have begun to fully implement reverse transfer policies, their reported student-level outcomes data varies widely. Given the infancy of most reverse transfer policy, it is premature to pinpoint any single state action that has served to accelerate or hinder successful degree conferrals. However, taking a deeper look at exemplar state practices can provide guidance for states looking to implement reverse transfer policies in the future. The third in a series on reverse transfer policy, this brief presents early outcomes data for the 10 states that have implemented statewide reverse transfer policies and offers recommendations informed by prior state actions for states that have yet to enact or implement a statewide reverse transfer policy. The first brief, &quot;Reverse Transfer: The path less traveled&quot;, defines reverse transfer and explores how states might utilize the policy as an approach to support increasing educational attainment. The second brief, &quot;Reverse Transfer: Paving the pathway&quot;, focuses on the distinct approaches states are taking to implement reverse transfer policies. [For the first brief, &quot;Reverse Transfer: The Path Less Traveled. ECS Education Trends,&quot; see ED556470; and for the second brief, &quot;Reverse Transfer: Paving the Pathway. ECS Education Policy Analysis,&quot; see ED558966.]
Expanding Opportunity for All: How Can We Increase Community College Student Completion? A Choicework Discussion Starter
Author: Public Agenda
Date: 2015-02-00
Type: Guides - Non-Classroom
Subjects: Equal Education,Educational Opportunities,Community Colleges,Two Year College Students,Graduation Rate,Barriers,Academic Persistence,School Holding Power,Focus Groups,Discussion (Teaching Technique),Student Empowerment,Accountability,Instructional Innovation,Learning Strategies,Career Choice,Change Strategies

Although over 80 percent of the 1.5 million students who enter community colleges each year indicate they intend to attain a bachelor's degree or higher, less than 40 percent earn any form of college credential within six years. This discussion starter is designed to help both higher education professionals and the average citizen work through how to best address barriers to community college completion. It can be used in informal conversations or in focus groups.