The COVID-19 pandemic presented new challenges for educators who teach students with disabilities (SWD). The authors of this Data Note present national survey findings from secondary school principals and educators from the spring of the 2020–2021 school year, exploring educators' access to and use of supports for teaching SWD.
Research demonstrates that teaching students explicitly about issues of identity, diversity, equity, and bias—sometimes referred to as anti-bias education—can lead to positive student outcomes. RAND researchers leverage nationally representative survey data of kindergarten through 12th grade (K–12) public school teachers to examine whether teachers report providing anti-bias education and what anti-bias education looks like in K–12 schools.
Media accounts have described kindergarten through 12th grade teaching staff shortages in 2021–2022 that were severe enough to temporarily close schools for in-person instruction in some areas. To obtain a national picture of the types of staffing challenges that districts are facing in the 2021–2022 school year, RAND researchers surveyed 359 district and charter network leaders in the American School District Panel in fall 2021.
A total of 359 district leaders from school districts and charter management organizations took the fourth American School District Panel survey in fall 2021. This online tool allows users to select individual survey questions and compare district leaders' responses. Color-coded charts display survey results for all respondents and by district type, locale, student race/ethnicity, and district poverty level.
The American School District Panel (ASDP) is the newest addition to the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels. This report provides technical information about the November 2021 ASDP survey of district leaders. The authors describe the respondent districts' characteristics and the method used for creating survey weights to produce nationally representative estimates.
Media reports of staff shortages, heated school board meetings, increased student misbehavior, low student and teacher attendance, and enrollment declines suggest increased — rather than decreased — problems during this third pandemic school year. To learn about the prevalence of these challenges nationwide, RAND researchers surveyed 359 district and charter network leaders in the American School District Panel.
Developing a coherent, standards-aligned instructional system is challenging even in the best of times; it may be especially difficult to achieve as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. The authors focus on teachers' perceptions of the guidance received on English language arts instruction and instructional system coherence in the first full year of COVID-19 (2020–2021) and how teachers' perceptions compared with the 2019–2020 school year.
Using nationally representative data from the 2021 Learn Together Surveys, the authors examine the state of secondary principals' well-being and job-related stressors one year into the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors discuss implications and recommend strategies to encourage state and local policymakers and district leaders to consider principals' well-being and take steps to mitigate job-related stressors now and in the long term.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has exacerbated concerns about whether differences in school-aggregate test scores can be interpreted to represent real and meaningful differences in school progress and performance. In this report, RAND researchers investigate one issue that may contaminate utilization of COVID-19–era school-aggregate scores: changes in school composition over time.
The authors describe how the internet has become a safe harbor for white supremacist and other extremist views and introduce a framework with which internet users can categorize the platforms they encounter and navigate around high-traffic nodes of the extremist ecosystem.
The authors examine the first three years of operation for the Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety (CISELSS). They explore how CISELSS balanced competing pressures and shifting contextual conditions in the provision of technical assistance to state and local education agencies and offer insights about CISELSS's early implementation that might help guide efforts to continuously improve its provision of supports.
In this Data Note, the authors use nationally representative survey response data from the 2021 Learn Together Surveys (LTS) to examine how secondary teachers leverage different types of information to guide them to the supports and interventions that they use in the classroom. Drawing on their analysis of LTS data, the authors discuss three key findings and conclude with implications and policy recommendations.
This report provides information about the sample, survey instrument, and resultant data for the 2021 Learn Together Surveys that were administered to secondary principals and teachers in March 2021 via the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels. It includes a full set of basic frequency tables for each survey to inform policy and practice on various topics, such as supporting students' transitions to postsecondary pathways and student voice.
This study used two trials to test whether sending emails and offering different financial incentives to Oregon ECE workforce members increased career lattice sign-up and increased education and training levels or workplace retention.
Results from the June 2021 American School District Panel (ASDP) survey suggest that while public schools are expanding their nonacademic offerings in response to the pandemic, much of their academic offerings for the 2021–2022 school year will remain the same. In this report, the authors summarize key ASDP findings based on the responses of 292 district leaders, after weighting their responses to make them nationally representative.
This report provides the survey questions and weighted responses from a July 2021 survey of parents concerning school hesitancy and preferences for COVID-19 safety practices in schools in the United States. The results are intended to inform school districts' and health officials' planning for operating schools in fall 2021.
The authors of this report surveyed 292 school district leaders between June 1, 2021, and July 2, 2021, to ask about staff turnover, staff hiring, and districts' financial outlooks at the end of the 2020–2021 school year. Although districts have not experienced much-feared budget and staffing crises during the pandemic, they might yet.
The American School District Panel (ASDP) is the newest addition to the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels. This report provides technical information about the June 2021 ASDP survey of district leaders. The authors describe the respondent districts' characteristics and their method for creating survey weights to produce nationally representative estimates.
A total of 292 district leaders from school districts and charter management organizations took the third American School District Panel survey in June 2021. This online tool allows users to select individual survey questions and compare district leaders' responses. Color-coded bar charts display survey results for all respondents and by district type, locale, student racial and ethnicity composition, and district poverty level.
This brief discusses findings from several RAND reports on principals' roles with respect to instructional materials. Recommendations describe how stakeholders can prepare and support principals to lead in selecting and using instructional materials.
The authors examine what school leaders regard as the key dimensions of quality instructional materials and describe the role school leaders play in guiding the selection and use of instructional materials. School leaders involve teachers in the selection of instructional materials, create buy-in for district-recommended or -required curriculum, and provide guidance that balances teacher autonomy and the fidelity of curriculum implementation.
Researchers used news and blog data to understand efforts by foreign countries to spread malign information regarding COVID-19 in the Indo-Pacific region. The authors used RAND's proprietary lexical analysis platform, RAND-Lex, to explore whether news and blog data could provide some initial insights on the reach of, content of, and tactical strategies used in foreign malign information about COVID-19 in the Indo-Pacific.
The authors use American Teacher Panel data to explore the state of teacher well-being in the United States. They describe the job-related stressors that teachers faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and how those stressors are associated with teachers' reported well-being. They also examine the working conditions of teachers who were considering leaving their jobs because of the pandemic.
RAND researchers surveyed more than 2,000 parents of children ages 5–18 in May 2021 about their willingness to send their children to school in person in fall 2021. The research team also asked parents about their support for various health and safety practices at school, including getting their children tested for coronavirus disease 2019, and whether they would get their children vaccinated if a vaccine were available.
This Data Note provides a picture of students' learning experiences in kindergarten through grade 12 schools that have adopted a variety of operational models (e.g., fully in-person, hybrid, fully remote) during the 2020–2021 school year. Our findings provide evidence that students are on sharply different learning pathways depending on whether their schools have been mostly remote or mostly in-person for the majority of this school year.
