2023 OPPORTUNITIES, THREATS, AND TRENDS IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

whitePaper | June 7, 2022

In January, 1997, after serving for 19 years as President of the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE), I began a new assignment as Director of Education for the Pew Charitable Trusts—a Philadelphia-based national foundation that makes grants in six major program areas. My immediate predecessor had focused the Education Program’s $35 million annual budget largely on K-12 issues.

whitePaper | June 17, 2022

Leadership is often seen as the answer to all sorts of problems. “We are in a crisis because of . . . (insert your favourite problem, such as economy, slow markets, reduced budgets, poor products, competition, low morale and so on), and we need leadership. It is the only way out of this mess”.

whitePaper | April 21, 2020

Seasonal learning research allows researchers to compare student learning patterns when school is in versus out of session. While there is some controversy about the magnitude of summer learning lossii,iii three trends are consistent across seasonal learning research findingsiv: achievement typically slows or declines over the summer months, declines tend to be steeper for math than for reading, and the extent (proportionally) of loss increases in the upper grades.

whitePaper | September 30, 2020

Change in education tends to focus on the systems level. This makes sense. Policymakers have to ensure that reforms address the needs of massive numbers of children, and teachers need clear strategic direction and deep research upon which to base their work. Yet if the theories and research are to be meaningful, these initiatives need to be taken up by teachers as everyday practice.

whitePaper | August 4, 2020

Over the last few months, the i-Ready team has had a chance to talk to more than 100 district leaders about the challenges they face as they plan for the 2020–2021 school year. We explored their challenges, their reasons to be hopeful, and the tools they believe will be most important for success in the year ahead. While every leader we spoke with had unique stories and circumstances, there were remarkable commonalities in the challenges they described.

whitePaper | July 29, 2020

An increase in teacher absences and the need to fill more positions than ever before have created a new set of challenges in the world of substitute teacher recruitment and retention. In December of 2019 and January of 2020, the EdWeek Research Center explored these challenges with a nationally representative, online survey of more than 2,000 principals, district leaders, and school board members. Survey results suggest that the challenge is big and getting bigger: Districts are currently able to fill just 54 percent of the approximately 250,000 teacher absences each day, the survey found.