What’s needed, in short, is a concerted effort to deepen research on teacher professional learning. The Research Partnership for Professional Learning, a collaboration of professional learning organizations and researchers at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, is doing some of this work by uniting experts to drive a transformation of professional learning research and practice in the United States.

“Throughout the whole country, we didn’t get a return on investment,” said Joshua Bleiberg, one of the researchers involved in the study at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. “It’s important to emphasize that this is an average. There are some places where it did work well.”

The study, The Effect of Teacher Evaluation on Achievement and Attainment: Evidence from Statewide Reforms, was posted on the Annenberg website in December 2021. It is a working paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Science and technology instruction is about to get even more engaging than the exciting lessons already in place at Providence’s Vartan Gregorian Elementary School. 

Teachers and administrators at the school, located just blocks away from Brown University in the city’s Fox Point neighborhood, are working with the University to transform an empty classroom into a hands-on, interactive space where students from kindergarten to fifth grade can explore science, technology, engineering, arts and math — or STEAM for short.

High-dosage/low ratio tutoring has “consistently proven to accelerate achievement as quickly as possible” for all students regardless of their demographics, age, or whether they are from rural, suburban or urban areas, said Penny Schwinn, the state’s education commissioner. 

Indeed, research shows that tutoring programs that serve children in small groups with regular, frequent sessions can increase learning by up to 10 months, according to a synthesis of research by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform.

What's happening: Nearly every sector is dealing with a pandemic-era labor shortage, but the problem is especially acute in public education.

"Teacher salaries had fallen in the few years even before the pandemic, reducing the supply of teachers," says Susanna Loeb, an education economist and director of Brown University's Annenberg Institute. "So the shortage of teachers may actually be greater than the shortage in other areas, which are more pandemic related."

Teachers strikes often generate headlines where they’re taking place, but their influence can extend beyond local communities and affect political discourse in surprising ways, according to a new study by Brown University’s Melissa Arnold Lyon and Matthew A. Kraft. The researchers looked at 550 local strikes in the past few years, some of them part of the coordinated “Red for Ed” work stoppages in 2018, and the political advertisements that followed them. FutureEd associate director Phyllis Jordan spoke with Lyon about the new research.

Master’s student Isabella Arreola was named the 2021 Ruth J. Simmons Urban Education Policy Scholar, which includes a full-tuition award and recognizes the UEP graduate student who most epitomizes the former Brown University president’s commitment to educational equity and social justice. The Annenberg Institute’s Board of Overseers established the Ruth J. Simmons Urban Education Policy Scholarship as a permanent annual award in 2012. 

Jonathan Collins, assistant professor of international and public affairs and education, noted the plan’s emphasis on closing the digital divide — which refers to the disparity in student access to technology between school districts — and updating Rhode Island’s historically poorly maintained school buildings. 

“What you see here is investments in capital projects that can be one-time purchases that can have long-term impacts,” Collins said.

Nate Schwartz, associate professor of practice at the Annenberg Institute, said that the plan’s recommendations regarding education policy feel “mostly right at the high level.” Schwartz praised how the plan lays out short-term actions based on recovering from the pandemic, such as an increased focus on mental health services and prioritization of student engagement.

Teacher strikes have a profound and often unrecognized role in national politics, a new working paper suggests: They put education front and center in Congressional campaigns and advertisements.

Holding a strike more than doubles the likelihood that a Congressional candidate will air an education ad in the area where the labor action occurred, write the authors of the paper, which has not yet been peer reviewed.