Epidemiological and Economic Effects of Lockdown

Epidemiological and Economic Effects of Lockdown. Brookings Institution.  Alexander D. Arnon, John A. Ricco, and Kent A. Smetters. September 23, 2020

Orders encouraging people to leave their homes for only their most essential needs during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic reduced deaths at a lower economic cost than mandatory business shutdowns, suggests a paper to be discussed at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) conference on September 24.

The paper’s authors—Alex Arnon, John Ricco, and Kent Smetters of the University of Pennsylvania—created an integrated framework that evaluated the health and economic effects of “non-pharmaceutical interventions” by state and local governments at the county level. They focused on three major interventions—stay-at-home orders, nonessential business closures, and school closures. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 53 pages].

Growing Teachers from Within: Implementation, Impact, and Cost of an Alternative Teacher Preparation Program in Three Urban School Districts

Growing Teachers from Within: Implementation, Impact, and Cost of an Alternative Teacher Preparation Program in Three Urban School Districts. RAND Corporation.  Julia H. Kaufman et al. September 29, 2020.

TNTP, an organization committed to ending educational inequities by promoting the recruitment, training, and retention of high-quality teachers and school leaders, implemented its Teacher Effectiveness and Certification (TEACh) initiative in three urban school districts. Through TEACh, TNTP works with school districts to develop a within-district process to recruit, prepare, and certify teacher candidates, as well as hire and support them in their first year. As part of an evaluation of this initiative, RAND investigated each district program’s implementation and costs, the effects of TEACh on the recruitment and retention of teachers, and the relative performance of those teachers. This is the final report for that evaluation. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 65 pages].

Preparing the Workforce for 2030: A Pillar of Trade Leadership

Preparing the Workforce for 2030: A Pillar of Trade Leadership. Center for Strategic & International Studies. William Alan Reinsch et al. October 2, 2020

The CSIS Trade Commission on Affirming American Leadership was created in the summer of 2019 to develop a series of recommendations to cement U.S. global leadership in light of a multitude of twenty-first-century challenges, both at home and abroad. In a series of reports, the Commission lays out recommendations for the U.S. workforce, U.S. innovation policy, and U.S. engagement in the international trading system. This report, which is the second of four reports to be released from the commission, focuses on the U.S. workforce. This report recommends nine elements of a new approach to workforce development in the United States. Together, these recommendations would make the U.S. workforce more agile, adaptable, and competitive and put the United States in a position to pursue an am­bitious trade agenda. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 50 pages].

Link It, Open It, Use It: Changing How Education Data Are Used to Generate Ideas

Link It, Open It, Use It: Changing How Education Data Are Used to Generate Ideas. Center for Global Development. Jack Rossiter. September 14, 2020

Data-driven decision-making is in the spotlight in 2020, with the public expecting data to guide government choices during ongoing emergencies, including COVID-19. Within education systems, leaders want to know what the data can tell them about when to reopen schools, how to prevent learning loss, how to gauge dropout risk, how to encourage re-enrolment, where to deploy teachers to manage class sizes, and how to meet the needs of students when they return to schools.

In response, countries have scrambled to setup systems that track health and economic indicators and monitor equity and mobility issues that may have been caused by government action. Yet as ministries of education plan their recovery, many rely on data systems which fail to provide the information needed to target attention; and as planners seek to learn from past emergencies in similar contexts, they are finding that public data on basic indicators like re-enrolment and teacher supply do not exist. Beyond urgent needs, our current crisis is drawing attention to long-standing flaws in education data systems.In this note, I discuss a new approach to how national administrative education data—records of school census, public exams, school inspection, teacher payroll, and other operational matters, collected on routine basis—are integrated, shared, and used to generate knowledge. Drawing on examples from low- and middle-income countries, I demonstrate (a) how integrating and making available administrative data will deliver relevant policy and operational insights; (b) how this approach can engage individuals with the skills and incentives to solve data and policy problems with ministries of education; and (c) how increasing data use can be the fastest path to improving what is collected. I present Open Data for Education System Analysis as a strategy to change the way education data are used to facilitate better analysis and evidence for education. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 17 pages].

Beyond Reopening Schools: How Education Can Emerge Stronger Than Before COVID-19

Beyond Reopening Schools: How Education Can Emerge Stronger Than Before COVID-19. Brookings Institution. Emiliana Vegas and Rebecca Winthrop. September 8, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in at least one positive thing: a much greater appreciation for the importance of public schools. As parents struggle to work with their children at home due to school closures, public recognition of the essential caretaking role schools play in society has skyrocketed. As young people struggle to learn from home, parents’ gratitude for teachers, their skills, and their invaluable role in student well-being, has risen. As communities struggle to take care of their vulnerable children and youth, decisionmakers are having to devise new mechanisms for delivering essential services from food to education to health care. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[HTML format, various paging].

Media Use and Literacy in Schools: Civic Development in the Era of Truth Decay

Media Use and Literacy in Schools: Civic Development in the Era of Truth Decay. RAND Corporation. Laura S. Hamilton, Julia H. Kaufman, Lynn Hu. June 29, 2020.

Public schools that serve kindergarteners through 12th graders can play a key role in combating Truth Decay by supporting students’ civic development and engagement. Media literacy instruction is one way that schools can do this. Assessments of American students’ media literacy capabilities have shown that large majorities lack the knowledge and skills needed to interpret media accurately. This Data Note examines public-school social studies teachers’ reports regarding how they and their schools promote media literacy and the appropriate use of media by students. It also summarizes teachers’ perceptions of challenges associated with media literacy and use. This Data Note is intended to provide a broad, nationally representative view of how social studies teachers and schools reported addressing (or planning to address) media literacy and media use in fall 2019. These data can help policymakers and education leaders understand how the nation’s schools are addressing these topics, the extent to which these practices vary across different types of schools, and the supports that teachers might need in order to provide effective instruction in this area. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 8 pages].

An Analysis of Education and Training Programs in Advanced Manufacturing Using Robotics

An Analysis of Education and Training Programs in Advanced Manufacturing Using Robotics. RAND Corporation. Megan Andrew et al. July 6, 2020.

In many factories today, robots are already working alongside human workers and have been doing so for some time. Analysts anticipate that this trend is likely to grow as industrial robots become increasingly sophisticated and advanced. At the same time, there likely will be a shortage of human workers who hold the necessary technical and nontechnical skills to work with, program, and repair their machine counterparts. Given this reality, it is critical that new workers and those who are in the process of retraining have access to effective and affordable training programs. But do we have enough quality programs to serve this need? And what factors constitute a “quality program”?
The RAND Corporation was asked to assess the state and future of education and training in advanced manufacturing (AM) using robotics, with a special focus on the U.S. Midwest region and the state of Pennsylvania — areas that currently are and historically have been hubs of manufacturing and provide important test cases for answering questions about the availability and content of AM training programs. The research team examines the economic context in which education, training, and workforce development programs currently operate and potentially will operate in the near future; reviews available programs and evaluates their curricular content and instructional practices and technologies; and reviews promising educational practices in these areas. The team also offers recommendations for stakeholders to consider as they work to meet the needs of the future AM workforce. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 33 pages].

Can We Measure School Quality Using Publicly Available Data?

Can We Measure School Quality Using Publicly Available Data? Urban Institute. Tomas Monarrez, Matthew Chingos. July 9, 2020

School-level achievement results drive high-stakes decisions but are often a reflection of the students a school serves, rather than the quality of the school itself. In this report, we assess whether publicly available data on school test scores and student characteristics can be used to generate high-quality measures of schools’ effects on student achievement. We find that adjusting for student demographics makes test score data a better indicator of school quality than using raw scores, but considerable bias remains. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 42 pages].

Teachers’ Civics Instructional Materials: Civic Development in the Era of Truth Decay

Teachers’ Civics Instructional Materials: Civic Development in the Era of Truth Decay. RAND Corporation. Julia H. Kaufman, Laura S. Hamilton, Lynn Hu. July 13, 2020.

Public schools that serve kindergarteners through 12th graders can play a key role in combating Truth Decay by supporting students’ civic development and engagement. Teachers’ instructional materials provide one window into civic education in schools. Research in mathematics and English language arts (ELA) for students in kindergarten through 12th grade suggests that teachers use and modify instructional materials in diverse ways and they often create their own materials. Researchers have also documented how teachers’ use of instructional materials in mathematics and ELA is connected to the instructional practices in which teachers report engaging their students, and multiple studies have connected the use of particular math and ELA curricula with increases in student achievement. However, little is known about the use of educational content for such subjects as social studies—particularly regarding the content that teachers rely on to provide instruction in civics-related topics, which has implications for students’ civic development. As part of RAND’s Truth Decay initiative, this Data Note unpacks ways in which social studies teachers across the United States reported using instructional materials in their classrooms to teach civics. These data are intended to inform policymakers, researchers, and educators on potential ways to support civics teaching and learning. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 8 pages].

Making Education and Employment Work for High School Students

Making Education and Employment Work for High School Students. Urban Institute. Molly M. Scott, Jessica Shakesprere, Kristen Porter. June 18, 2020

Teens often feel compelled take on adult economic responsibilities when their families struggle to make ends meet. Our schools can make it incredibly difficult for young people to balance these responsibilities and stay on track to graduate. This toolkit provides practical recommendations for school systems, as well as state and federal policymakers, on how to identify young people before they fall behind; make mainstream educational systems more flexible and supportive; better align career and technical education (CTE) with paid work opportunities; and improve access to employment. These reforms are fundamentally an issue of equity, but they can also make education and employment more humane for all students. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 37 pages].