America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2011

The new report fro ChildStats is available here: http://childstats.gov/
This data-rich interagency report (including contributions from NCES) provides information on areas including health, education, economics, demographics and families.

Minority gaps narrow for some grades in latest geography scores

The Nation's Report Card: Geography 2010 is now available and show somewhat smaller gaps between scores for Hispanics and whites (grade 4) and between Black and white students (grades 4 and 8). Overall, average scores were not significantly changed from 2001 (the last national assessment) for grades 8 and 12.
Links to the newest report are here: http://nationsreportcard.gov/

2010 IDEA National Assessment Implementation Study

"This congressionally mandated study provides a national picture of state agency implementation of early intervention programs for infants and toddlers (IDEA Part C) and both state and school district implementation of special education programs for preschool- and school-age children (IDEA Part B). "
Links to an executive summary and the final report are here: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20114026/

Math & vocabulary performance of children receiving preschool Special Ed

A Longitudinal View of the Receptive Vocabulary and Math Achievement of Young Children with Disabilities, was released by the National Center for Special Education Research and is available for download at: http://ies.ed.gov/ncser/pubs/20113006/
The report "describe[s] how children who received preschool special education services perform over time on assessments of receptive vocabulary and math skills. It also describes how their receptive vocabulary and math performance vary over time by primary disability category."

2011 Condition of Education (NCES) now available as e-book

Download your own copy of this benchmark annual study which "presents 50 indicators on the status and condition of education... in five main areas: (1) participation in education; (2) learner outcomes; (3) student effort and educational progress; (4) the contexts of elementary and secondary education; and (5) the contexts of postsecondary education."
Free download available for all e-readers.  http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2011033

Princeton challenges publishers' stranglehold on copyrights

Princeton has now mandated open access  for all their faculty scholarship, by prohibiting faculty from signing away copyrights to journal publishers. There is a loophole of course--faculty can request a waiver--but the move is in the right direction to make scholarship more widely available. The story, with links to Princeton's open access policy (adopted Sept. 19, 2011) is here.

Shortage of PhD's in Special Education predicted...

A note in the Chronicle (Sept. 14, 2011) summarizes this report from the Special Education Faculty Needs Assessment project at Claremont Graduate University, "Assessing Trends in Leadership: Special Education’s Capacity to Produce a Highly Qualified Workforce." They suggest that, "Not enough people are getting Ph.D.’s in special education, which could result in a shortage of qualified special-education faculty members...one-half to two-thirds of special-education faculty will retire within the next five years, which could leave 300 students with disabilities underserved for each missing faculty member."