Cara Jackson
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carajackson.bsky.social
Cara Jackson
@carajackson.bsky.social
Devoted to development & use of evidence to improve educational policy, practice, & outcomes. Evidence Use in Education, LLC. Past president https://aefpweb.org/. Co-editor: http://rb.gy/ipo4d5 & https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED603550
researchpractice.org
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If we care about evidence being used in policy and practice, we should think about what questions policymakers and practitioners have.

Some thoughts on how to get started in Democratizing the Development of Evidence
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Democratizing the Development of Evidence - Cara Jackson, 2022
This essay offers a framework for broader community involvement as a means of increasing the relevance and usefulness of evidence developed. This essay begins b...
journals.sagepub.com
Reposted by Cara Jackson
The Department of Education shared data today on IHEs where, 4 years after earning a credential, graduates earned less than peers with only a high school diploma.

What ED didn't shout out was just how many of those institutions are for-profits. So I got the data. jamessmurphy.com/2025/12/09/w...
FAFSA Reveals Earnings Data for Colleges and Graduates
The Department of Education's new FAFSA changes highlight the alarming number of for-profit institutions where graduates earn less than high school completers.
jamessmurphy.com
December 9, 2025 at 2:42 AM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Ed. Dept. Workers Targeted in Layoffs Are Returning to Tackle Civil Rights Backlog: The Trump administration is bringing back dozens of Education Department staffers who were slated to be laid off.
Ed. Dept. Workers Targeted in Layoffs Are Returning to Tackle Civil Rights Backlog
The Trump administration is bringing back dozens of Education Department staffers who were slated to be laid off.
www.edweek.org
December 8, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Baby's first college acceptance! 🥳
a man in a suit and tie says well that 's a relief in front of a map
Alt: a man in a suit and tie says "well, that's a relief" in front of a map
media.tenor.com
December 8, 2025 at 10:35 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Parents, students, and advocates have long called on the Detroit district to provide better instruction for English learners.

Will the district’s literacy lawsuit funds pay off for newcomers?
The Detroit district says these investments are helping English learners
State test data suggests more English learners are meeting growth targets. The district credits this in part to hiring more multilingual academic interventionists.
www.chalkbeat.org
December 8, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Grades submitted! 🥳

Two more work trips and that's a wrap for 2025. What a year.
December 8, 2025 at 9:50 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Ah, remember when folks were telling us Mahmoud v. Taylor wasn't that bad, limited to a few curricular opt-outs, would be contained...
The Supreme Court just set aside a 2nd Circuit decision upholding New York's requirement that all school students, public and private, obtain certain vaccinations, without any religious exemptions. It orders the 2nd Circuit to reconsider the ruling in light of SCOTUS' LGBTQ school books decision.
December 8, 2025 at 8:46 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
The Supreme Court seems poised to hand Trump autocratic power by allowing him to fire independent agency officials for any reason
Supreme Court Seems Ready To Blow Up A 90-Year-Old Precedent
Such a decision will “destroy the structure of government” and remove one of the remaining roadblocks to the president’s ability to do whatever he wants.
www.huffpost.com
December 8, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Webinar @brookings.edu today on K-12 education: Accountability and performance on the 10th anniversary of ESSA.

The livestream of the event will appear on this webpage at 11:50 a.m. EST: www.hamiltonproject.org/event/k-12-e...
K-12 education: Accountability and performance on the 10th anniversary of ESSA - The Hamilton Project
On December 8, the Hamilton Project will host a virtual event exploring measurement, outcomes, and accountability in public schools.
www.hamiltonproject.org
December 8, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Fascinating things happening on Econ Twitter
December 7, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Education Dept. asks hundreds of fired employees to temporarily return

The agency is asking laid-off staffers in the Office for Civil Rights to come back and pitch in to help handle school discrimination cases. www.usatoday.com/story/news/p... by @zachschermele.bsky.social
www.usatoday.com
December 7, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
I’m of two minds about this “male loneliness crisis” or whatever. On one hand it’s pretty clear that broken social relations (community, romantic, whatever) is a social problem.

On the other hand dawg you can’t sit in the house unwashed gaming with fascists and expect to get any play from women.
December 7, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Households face annual costs of roughly $400–$900 from climate change—mainly from disasters, higher insurance, and energy costs—with lower-income families and certain regions hit disproportionately, from @kclausing.bsky.social, Knittel, and @cwolfram.bsky.social www.nber.org/papers/w34525
December 7, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
This week, a federal judge wrote that federal agents – largely from ICE, but also CBP and other agencies operating in D.C. – had adopted an “arrest first, ask questions later” approach, ignoring legal requirements around when and how immigrants can be detained.

@maustermuhle.bsky.social reports:
Federal judge limits warrantless immigration arrests in D.C.
Lawyers say federal agents unlawfully operated under an ‘arrest first, ask questions later’ policy.
51st.news
December 6, 2025 at 10:32 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Study after study shows campaign ads barely move the needle. So where does money’s real power come from? I ranked the five ways money corrupts politics—from least to most corrosive. What I’ve learned from 15 years of tracking political money:
Money Doesn't Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse.
Campaign ads barely move the needle. The real influence is hiding in plain sight.
open.substack.com
December 6, 2025 at 8:22 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Summer school participation pretty consistently provided modest benefits to students in math (but NOT reading), see Figure 1. The math benefits of summary school in our studies were generally more consistent and larger than what we found for tutoring (Figure 2).
December 6, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Person who actually deserves a trophy is the artist who made the FIFA peace prize trophy look like everyone in the entire world holding their head in their hands out of secondhand embarrassment
December 5, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Nationwide, the supply of infant and toddler #ECE does not meet demand, and the costs of care are #unaffordable for many #families. Curious about the status in your state? Check out our new @urbaninstitute.bsky.social snapshots!

www.urban.org/data-tools/s...
State Snapshots of Infant and Toddler Early Care and Education
State-by-state breakdowns of the supply, demand, affordability, and licensing requirements for early child care and education.
www.urban.org
December 5, 2025 at 3:41 PM
My baby turns 18 today! 🥳 and it's snowing just like the day he was born ❄️
December 5, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Did you submit a proposal for #AEFP2026? Keep an eye out for #AEFP2026 decisions in your inbox 👀
December 4, 2025 at 11:45 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Lots of discussion about whether shifting education programs from US Department of Education to other federal agencies is a good idea (narrator: it isn't).

Our team and Sligo Law Group looked at whether it's even legal to do so.

TL;DR: It likely isn't.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...
DEEP DIVE: Beyond “The Maximum Extent Permitted By Law”
Beyond “The Maximum Extent Permitted By Law” Legal Analysis of the U.S. Department of Education’s Transfers of Programs to Other Federal Agencies December 4, 2025 President Trump issued an executiv...
docs.google.com
December 4, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Trump Renames Institute of Peace for Himself
www.nytimes.com
December 4, 2025 at 1:08 PM
I married a contrarian, which is generally a pain in the ass but if this takes off we'll be set for life.
The co-founder of Kalshi says: " The long-term vision is to financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion."
December 3, 2025 at 9:54 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
Making the teacher workforce more diverse is hard to do if there aren't diverse prospective teachers being prepared. This new @nctq.bsky.social report dives into the issue of the diversity of individuals being prepared to teach and how that varies across prep programs: www.nctq.org/press/4-in-1...
4 in 10 teacher prep programs are actively making the teacher workforce less diverse, analysis finds - National Council on Teacher Quality
www.nctq.org
December 3, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by Cara Jackson
NCLB helped raise test scores -- esp. for struggling kids and esp. in math. That's good!

But also huge downsides: narrowed curriculum, perverse incentives, cheating, distorted views of school quality

The next era of school reform -- if there is one -- needs to *learn* from NCLB, not replicate it
There's a new nostalgia for No Child Left Behind gripping parts of the education world .

I took a deep dive into the research to see whether it's really true that NCLB-style school accountability drove learning gains. Answer: yes—with several asterisks

cbnewsletters.chalkbeat.org/p/would-more...
Did scaling back school accountability and testing pressure hurt students?
Critics say ending No Child Left Behind and moving to the Every Student Succeeds Act can help explain declining test scores. Here’s what the research shows.
cbnewsletters.chalkbeat.org
December 3, 2025 at 3:31 PM
"Implementation has real costs: time, resources and training to use tools as designed."

District leaders: great advice here on questions to ask as you consider #EdTech options. www.the74million.org/article/2739...
2,739 Ed Tech Tools Later, Where Are the Outcomes?
Mir: The call is simple: Buy what works, build for impact and hold everyone accountable to outcomes.
www.the74million.org
December 3, 2025 at 3:31 PM