The authors examine the ways in which media literacy education can be used to counter Truth Decay--the diminishing role that facts, data, and analysis play in political and civil discourse--by changing how people consume, create, and share information.

RAND researchers investigate factors that might be associated with positive student outcomes for schools that improved during the six years of the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative.

In this report, RAND researchers describe the Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning Initiative, as well as findings and early lessons from the first two years of implementation in the six participating communities.

The authors outline a framework for implementing and evaluating media literacy (ML) education, a promising approach to slowing Truth Decay. The report provides a framework for teachers and evaluators furthering their work in ML education.

This educational tool--a set of five lesson plans for middle school classes--is part of RAND's Countering Truth Decay initiative. The lesson plans introduce students to public policy research and emphasize the importance of media literacy skills.

TNTP, an organization committed to ending educational inequities by promoting the recruitment, training, and retention of high-quality teachers and school leaders, implemented its Teacher Effectiveness and Certification (TEACh) initiative in three urban school districts. Through TEACh, TNTP works with school districts to develop a within-district process to recruit, prepare, and certify teacher candidates, as well as hire and support them in their first year. As part of an evaluation of this initiative, RAND investigated each district program's implementation and costs, the effects of TEACh on the recruitment and retention of teachers, and the relative performance of those teachers. This is the final report for that evaluation.

Truth Decay-the diminishing role that facts, data, and analysis play in political and civic discourse-has in part been fueled by a complex and rapidly evolving media and technology ecosystem. For those interested in countering Truth Decay, media literacy (ML)-the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication-has emerged as a potentially powerful tool. But the lack of specificity regarding ML competencies can challenge teachers, policymakers, curriculum developers, advocates, and researchers hoping to understand what kinds of ML education work best and how ML education can be implemented effectively. There is also no shortage of ML-relevant standards. The large number of existing standards can be an additional challenge for stakeholders trying to understand how to define ML for themselves and to determine what competencies are most important to their work. This report, part of the Countering Truth Decay initiative, describes how the authors synthesized myriad existing standards using the lens of Truth Decay-drawing from standards in ML, digital literacy, information literacy, news literacy, social and emotional learning, and other areas-to identify a single, concise set of ML standards.

In this summary, RAND researchers describe the Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning Initiative-which is an effort to explore whether and how children benefit when schools and out-of-school time programs partner to improve and align social and emotional learning-as well as what it takes to do this work. The researchers report findings and early lessons from the first two years of implementation in the six participating communities.

The authors of this report offer an in-depth analysis of the Teacher Effectiveness and Certification (TEACh) program, an alternative teacher preparation program intended to train diverse cohorts of high-quality teaching candidates to fill hard-to-staff positions. They follow three TEACh programs in different regions of the United States, which were established in partnerships between TNTP (formerly known as The New Teacher Project) and local partner organizations. The partner organizations differed, with one consisting of a medium-size school district, one a large district, and one a nonprofit consortium serving charter schools and two small districts. In these regions, TNTP advised its partner organizations about recruiting, selecting, training, and supporting cohorts of teachers in a gradual release model over the course of three years, with the partner organization taking full responsibility in the third year. In evaluating the implementation and effects of the TEACh programs, the authors focused on the first two cohorts of teacher candidates in the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 school years. In addition to tracing successes and challenges in each program and cohort, including the effect of new teachers on student achievement, the authors considered the advantages of using alternative pathways to recruiting, training, and supporting local candidates at a time when states and school districts across the United States are facing substantial shortages of teachers to staff key roles in kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) schools.

Recent, widely publicized incidents of misinformation and disinformation underscore the need to equip Americans with the knowledge and skills required to navigate a changing media landscape. Media literacy (ML) education has emerged as an important tool in mitigating Truth Decay (described as the diminishing role of facts, data, and analysis in political and civil discourse). A survey administered to public school teachers focused on the kinds of ML instruction promoted in public schools and the obstacles that teachers face in delivering ML curricula and instruction in their classrooms. Survey results indicate that ML instruction is unevenly implemented, at best, and that obstacles to teaching ML (e.g., lack of time, other priorities) are common. The survey also revealed that ML instruction, and obstacles to it, varies across schools of different ethnic makeups and poverty levels, suggesting that there are opportunities to administer ML education more equitably.