On Monday, October 27, Kansas joined the increasing number of states seeking to waive certain requirements of federal education law. Specifically, the waiver seeks to make a unified accountability system, merging the current state and federal systems into one within four years. This move comes at a...

This post is the second in a series exploring literacy within education policy and practice. In the first blog , we introduced the major methods of teaching reading in the U.S. — phonics, whole language, balanced literacy, and sight word memorization. Here, we look at how those methods developed and...

This blog post is the first in a series exploring literacy within education policy and practice. Here, we introduce the major methods of teaching reading and the debates surrounding them. Understanding these approaches — what they are, how they work, and why they matter — helps set the stage for...

This opinion piece originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch . By Eric Syverson, Director of Policy & Research, Aligned. Across the nation, skepticism toward statewide assessment is rising. Teachers and families increasingly question whether traditional testing supports learning or just...

Child care is no longer just a family issue. It is a workforce issue. Across the political spectrum, there is growing recognition that the lack of affordable, reliable care is holding back both parents and employers. In the U.S. mixed-delivery child care system, businesses play a vital role by...

For years, educators have raised a problem with assessments: testing students only after instruction ends, when it’s too late to help them improve. Traditionally, states have used end-of-year exams to measure student performance against academic standards, but those tests do little to inform day-to...