The following resources focus on the educational climate and betterment of those serving the K–12 educational community.

Competency-Based Policies and Pathways: Lessons from Colorado and Illinois. (Achieve Newsroom, September 27) To address learning gaps among students in traditional education settings, some states have turned toward a competency-based pathways (CBP) approach to advance true college and career readiness for their students. These states are using CBP to address persistent inequities caused by students progressing through a course of study without mastering essential knowledge and skills, lift the ceiling for students who want to progress at a faster pace, and provide flexibility and opportunity to accelerate learning. Through the state engagement and development of recommendations, Achieve has identified early lessons learned in Colorado and Illinois that will be of interest to other states exploring CBP. Read more.

Next Gen High Schools: The White House held the second summit on Next Generation High Schools and committed new federal resources to advance them. These include: a resource that focuses on six evidence-based strategies to improve critical student outcomes, such as high school completion and readiness for college and careers; a progress report detailing key metrics of success from the commitments made at the first summit; the first of 13 issue briefs, “Early Warning Systems,” to provide descriptive information on the prevalence and characteristics of strategies designed to help at-risk students graduate from high school; and a resource that focuses on six evidence-based strategies to improve critical student outcomes, such as high school completion and readiness for college and careers.

Equal Opportunities for English Learners: The Department recently released new non-regulatory guidance on Title III of the Every Student Succeeds Act to help schools and districts provide effective services to English language learners. The guidance will help support services to the more than 4.8 million English learners enrolled in U.S. schools in grades K-12, as reported in the 2014-15 school year. The guidance is accompanied by the Newcomer Toolkit to help educators and other support staff that work with immigrant students. This work continues to build on the Department’s commitment to educational excellence and ensuring equal access for all students.

Education funding lawsuits may show what’s ahead for Illinois. (Pantagraph, September 28). Court rulings in Connecticut, Kansas, and Washington have deemed inequitable state education funding plans unconstitutional, mandating state overhaul. As a bipartisan commission that Gov. Bruce Rauner assembled works on a proposed funding overhaul, these court decisions offer a glimpse of what could be in store for Illinois if the Democratic-controlled General Assembly and the Republican governor fail to reach an agreement. Read more

Easier Way to Find What Works: The Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the independent research and statistics arm of the Department, launched a new website for the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). The site has been redesigned to make it easier for users to find programs and interventions that evidence shows have had a positive impact on student outcomes. Users can take a quick tour of the site and get an overview of the different features and how to use them.

Nourishing and Sustaining Innovation: School leaders hoping to inspire change in their buildings would do well to heed some advice: build a strong foundation of support, be patient, and develop a plan. This guidance from Ron Williamson, professor at Eastern Michigan University, and Barbara Blackburn, educational author, provides leaders with a thoughtful and thorough process for changing the culture of a school, right from the beginning of the year (Williamson and Blackburn, MiddleWeb).

TN – Can New Model Reduce School Suspensions Nationally? A Vanderbilt researcher’s study of a discipline model aimed at building positive social-emotional responses among young students says it shows promise as a national model to reduce suspensions and expulsions, especially among black students. (Tennessean, September 27)

Student Attrition Lookup Tool (SALT): This online research tool provides empirical estimates of student mobility rates to help researchers plan for student attrition when conducting studies in U.S. public schools. Student-level, school-based, longitudinal evaluations often encounter study attrition when students move away from, or drop out of, study schools. In some cases, this mobility-induced attrition simply decreases sample size, weakening the study’s power to detect a treatment effect. At worst, attrition introduces bias into an otherwise well-designed study and threatens the study’s internal and external validity. Researchers can get student mobility estimates for different student and school subpopulations and for different transition periods from kindergarten to grade 12. Mobility rates are broken down by three types of mobility that correspond to different types of data collection: 1) move out of the student’s original school, 2) move to a different school and school district, and 3) move outside the state public school system. (Source: American Institutes for Research)