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"The Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) program serves more than 550,000 high school students each year, many of whom are at risk for failing academically or dropping out of school. Although these programs are widely distributed--programs operate in 50 states, four U.S. territories, and Department of Defense Education Activity schools--there has been recent congressional interest in whether the schools participating in JROTC programs are representative with respect to geographic area, with a special focus on whether rural areas are adequately represented. In response to these interests and motivations, this study had two primary objectives: Examine the representativeness of JROTC at the school level with respect to geography and demographics and determine how federal laws and policies affect starting and sustaining JROTC units. RAND researchers merged JROTC program data with public high school data from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data to analyze demographic and geographic representativeness at the school level. Service and school representatives were interviewed on such topics as benefits of JROTC for the students, challenges with JROTC-unit administration, and instructor hiring. The authors found that JROTC has strong representation among schools with demographically diverse populations. However, geographically, JROTC is underrepresented in rural areas and in about two-thirds of states. A number of factors present challenges for improving representativeness, and the report offers several policy recommendations for addressing these factors, including the expansion of the National Defense Cadet Corps"--Publisher's description

Military education --- Career academies --- United States. --- Recruiting, enlistment, etc.

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The National Summer Learning Project (NSLP) examined the implementation and effectiveness of voluntary summer learning programs developed by five school districts — Boston, Massachusetts; Dallas, Texas; Duval County, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Rochester, New York — and their local community partners. The study spanned three phases. The RAND research team (1) collected formative data for strengthening the five summer programs in 2011 and 2012; (2) examined student outcomes after one summer (2013) and after two summers of programming (2014 and 2015); and (3) examined student outcomes in spring 2017, at the end of three school years after the second summer of programming. This seventh report in a series summarizes the findings of this third phase in the context of earlier findings and offers implications for policy and practice. Overall longitudinal findings show that, by spring 2017, the academic benefits for high attenders decreased in magnitude and were not statistically significant — although when benchmarked against typical achievement gains at the same grade level, they remained large enough to be educationally meaningful.

Summer schools --- Academic achievement --- United States.

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The job of the school principal has become much more complex and demanding over the past several decades. Many university-based principal preparation programs - which prepare the majority of school principals - have struggled with how to make the fundamental changes needed to prepare principals for today's schools. To test a path forward, The Wallace Foundation provided grants to seven universities and their partners to redesign their principal preparation programs in line with research-supported practices. This report shares findings from the RAND Corporation's five-year study of The Wallace Foundation's University Principal Preparation Initiative (UPPI). Under UPPI, each team developed a clear and ambitious vision for its program. Overall, the changes the teams enacted ensured that the programs were more rigorous, coherent, and authentically connected to the work of on-the-ground school leaders. Throughout the initiative, the teams balanced common objectives and structure with flexibility for their specific context and changing conditions. This report illustrates that it is feasible for universities - in partnership with high-need districts, state agencies, and with the support of mentor programs that have engaged in successful redesign - to improve principal preparation programs to reflect the best available evidence.

School principals --- Training of