public-education

Evidence Matters | Coming Up Short: Reframing the Teaching Profession

November 30, 2023 In the first two posts of our Coming Up Short series, we focused on understanding the numbers behind the teacher shortage, as well as the “why” behind those numbers. In our final...

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Evidence Matters | Coming Up Short: Understanding the “Why” Behind the Teacher Shortage

November 16, 2023 As we discussed in our last post, understanding the numbers behind the teacher shortage—particularly when it comes to shortages in certain subject areas or geographic regions—is an important first step in addressing...

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Evidence Matters | Coming Up Short: The National Teacher Shortage by the Numbers

November 2, 2023 Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the national teacher shortage has entered American public consciousness. But the issue actually predates the pandemic by several years—the pandemic only deepened the crisis. According to a recent...

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Evidence Matters | Making the Grade: Strengthening Schools Through Community

August 10, 2023 Our Making the Grade series has discussed how evaluating a school’s effectiveness and quality comes with a wide array of challenges, particularly when assessing schools that serve larger populations of disadvantaged students....

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Evidence Matters | Making the Grade: The Quest for Quality Measures

August 1, 2023 As we highlighted in our previous Making the Grade posts, the established correlation between socioeconomic status (SES) and academic performance has long created difficulties for those attempting to measure school quality—if a...

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Evidence Matters | Making the Grade: Can an Early Start Lead to a Better Finish?

July 13, 2023 As we highlighted in our last post, when we interpret school report card ratings, it is important that we consider the ways in which various factors—including the overall socioeconomic status (SES) of...

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Evidence Matters | Making the Grade: The Socioeconomic Achievement Gap

July 6, 2023 In our previous post, we highlighted that while school report card rankings can offer insight into a school’s overall performance, they also involve the interaction of a variety of factors—the most significant...

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Evidence Matters | Making the Grade: A Series on the Complexities of School Report Cards

June 15, 2023 With the school year coming to a close, all grades and final report cards have been issued. But one major end-of-year assessment remains outstanding: the South Carolina school report card. Each fall,...

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Evidence Matters | Could the Montessori Method Make Us Happier?

April 26, 2023 According to a January 2023 survey administered by the South Carolina Joint Citizens and Legislative Committee on Children, many school districts in the state continue to report record numbers of vacancies in...

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Evidence Matters | What Montessori Could Mean for Equity

April 12, 2023 Across the country, leaders in public education continue to search for strategies and approaches that address the gap between our highest-performing and lowest-performing students, the latter of whom often come from low-income,...

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Evidence Matters | Making Sense of Montessori

March 29, 2023 As noted in our previous blog post, the Riley Institute’s Evidence Matters series will focus on a wide range of topics relevant to the field of public education. Today’s post will be...

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Why Evidence Matters: A New Blog Series Highlighting Important Topics in Public Education

March 16, 2023 If you asked 100 people what the word evidence means to them, you might receive 100 different answers. In a society increasingly overloaded with information—and plagued by doubts about what is “real”—...

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