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Over the past two decades, K-12 computer science (CS) education in schools has built an impressive foundation for computational thinking (CT) and programming skills. Students shifted from simply receiving instruction through computers toward learning how to direct computers themselves. Educator Bob Taylor foreshadowed this shift with his book The Computer…

Ever since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) took effect in 2002, student “proficiency” has been a guiding principle of education policy and reform. NCLB mandated that every student in the U.S. reach proficiency in reading and math and, per its very title, that no child be left behind. …

For decades, the education research community has focused on scaling promising programs to reach more students. But lasting change doesn’t come from trying to replicate a program step-for-step; it comes from replicating the student experiences that make learning meaningful. Earth Force has worked with educators and partner organizations for over…

Our recent paper, Investing in Educators, compared teacher and nurse union contracts on pay bonuses for hard-to-staff jobs. Nursing and teaching are both professional fields, yet nursing pays substantial, reliable money to fill hard-to-staff shifts and specialties. Despite research documenting the effectiveness of differential pay in high-poverty schools and in…

This summer, we’ve been closely tracking multiple bills introduced in the Senate aimed at advancing data and evidence in education. This is a promising moment of bipartisan alignment on an issue central to ALI’s work: whether the federal government has the infrastructure to find out what works in education and…

Learner Variability (LV) is the understanding that every learner has a unique learning profile of strengths and challenges. Research shows that personalized learning rooted in this understanding has a greater chance of success, but designing instruction that addresses LV through whole-child development remains a persistent challenge for busy educators managing…