This interactive video profile of the Quakertown Community School District (QCSD) is the first of a series providing readers with a real-life, practical story about how district and school leaders are working to improve student learning outcomes through the effective use of digital learning. It examines how QCSD—a small, K–12 public school district in rural southeastern Pennsylvania—worked with important partners, including its local teachers’ union, to improve student outcomes using effective applications of technology and blended learning strategies. Throughout the interactive profile, there are short videos from district practitioners describing how they addressed specific issues.

Prior to 2008, many states used inaccurate high school graduation rate calculations. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) issued regulations to address this concern, which were scheduled to become fully operational in every state in the 2011–12 school year. ED’s flexibility policy (i.e., waivers from key provisions within the No Child Left Behind Act [NCLB]) provides an opportunity for states to implement innovative policies and practices designed to improve student achievement and graduation rates. This report provides an extensive analysis by the Alliance for Excellent Education, which shows that recent progress in holding high schools accountable for how many students they graduate—the ultimate goal of K–12 education—may be slowed in some states based on waivers recently granted under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as NCLB. The report also includes a review of approved waiver plans submitted by thirty-four states and the District of Columbia.

For a century, most students have advanced from grade to grade based on the number of days they spend in class, but in New Hampshire, schools have moved away from “seat time” and toward “competency-based learning,” which advances students when they have mastered course content. This report profiles how two high schools in New Hampshire made this shift and examines the changes that were necessary to make competency-based advancement an important part of New Hampshire’s strategy for implementing the Common Core State Standards and ensuring that students graduate ready for college and a career.

The federal student financial aid system, originally designed to increase access to higher education, must undergo a transformation to help more students earn a higher education degree or certificate and meet the increased demands of the twenty-first-century economy. This report outlines a comprehensive approach for revamping the student aid system into one that better supports students and institutions of higher education 
and focuses on access and completion.

This report outlines serious problems with the current federal student financial aid system and calls on policymakers to simplify both the process and the programs and shift the system’s emphasis from simply access to providing the overall support resulting in postsecondary completion. It provides a brief overview of legislative changes that have altered the structure and focus of the system and turned them into a complicated web of Pell Grants, federal student loans, tuition tax credits, and campus-based aid programs that is unnecessarily convoluted and daunting for parents and students to navigate.

As students of color and diverse ethnicities rapidly become the leading population of public school systems in numerous states, closing educational achievement gaps and providing a quality education to all students can secure the United State’s future economic prosperity. Noting that two-thirds of the U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending, this report argues that raising individuals’ education levels will boost their purchasing power and increase the national economy.

While the U.S. Congress must confront crucial economic issues this month, every school, district, and state leader must make critical decisions in the next two years involving digital learning that will shape education for decades. This report identifies four key challenges that public school district leaders must systemically address in the next two years and outlines the essential elements for developing a comprehensive digital strategy.

The Common Core State Standards spell out the sophisticated language competencies that students will need to perform in academic and technical subject areas. English language learners (ELLs) face a double challenge—they must learn grade-level content while simultaneously building their language proficiency. This policy brief discusses these challenges, highlights initiatives and strategies to advance  ELLs' language and content learning, and outlines how policy and practice must change to help ELLs graduate ready for college and a career.

In the summer of 2012, the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) and the Alliance for Excellent Education conducted a survey of State Directors of Career Technical Education (CTE) to gauge state efforts to better connect CTE with a larger college- and career-readiness agenda. Survey questions spanned a range of issues, including whether each state had developed a definition of career readiness, the number of career academies in each state, and what states are doing to formally identify and remove barriers to work-based learning opportunities in policy and practice. This brief includes a short description of efforts from two states—Connecticut and Kentucky—to define work-based learning opportunities for youth participants, educators, and employers, and to create policies that provide greater access to these opportunities.

The nation’s economy is only as strong as the educational foundation that supports it. Economic success in the twenty-first century requires a labor force capable of demonstrating an advanced level of both knowledge and skill. To be a true engine of growth, the nation’s education system must be aligned with these demands. This is why the reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Educational Improvement Act of 2006 (Perkins), the nation’s largest federal investment in secondary and postsecondary career and technical education (CTE), is both critical and timely. As a result of the previous reauthorization, a greater emphasis was placed on improving the academic achievement of CTE students, program accountability, and the link between secondary and postsecondary education. The next reauthorization of Perkins must continue to build on these changes, ensuring that the opportunities provided at the secondary school level are relevant, engaging, of high quality, and aligned with the career demands that lie ahead, and that such opportunities place a targeted focus on those youth who have traditionally been least likely to have access to the educational opportunities that prepare them to be both college and career ready.