To identify regional needs, we consulted with state and district leaders, as well as with existing educational research alliances, such as the Newark Schools Research Collaborative and Delaware Valley Minority Student Achievement Consortium. We reached out to education stakeholder affinity groups (e.g., NJ and PA Associations of Superintendents, NJ Principals and Supervisors Association, Charter School Resource Centers, Alternate Route Teacher Training Programs in NJ and DE, PA Association of Rural and Small Schools; DE Education Association) and attended the 2011 Regional Advisory Committee meetings and webinars. Our review of extant documents, publicly available information, and education data included Race to the Top applications, state education plans, SEA websites, State-of-the-State addresses, the 2006–2011 REL Mid-Atlantic Needs Assessment Report, and analyses using National Center of Education Statistics datasets (Common Core of Data, 2000 Census, Annual Survey of Local Government Finances, National Assessment of Education Progress).
As a result of this process of assembling, reviewing, and discussing the data on key educational needs of the region three major areas of need emerged:
- Needs of at-risk youth throughout the region, manifest in the education arena through dropping out of school.
- Need to improve the quality and distribution of teaching throughout the region as well as increase understanding of the most important factors that contribute to effective teaching.
- Need to better align pre-K programs with early primary grades (K–3) so that more children are starting school at a similar level of readiness, thus greatly increasing their chance for early and sustainable academic success.
In addition, Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia are Race to the Top grantees, where issues of teacher evaluation, core standards and assessments, and student longitudinal data systems are at the highest level of priority.
Finally, a common thread related to rural education was identified. Significant portions of the Mid-Atlantic region remain rural, and schools in rural areas face challenges that include recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers, meeting the needs of the relatively recent influx of immigrant and migrant populations to rural areas of the region, and lack of access to specialized educational resources.