Policy Currents | The newsletter for policy people
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** March 25, 2025
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What Do We Know About Microschools?
Microschools are small, tuition-based schools that serve around 15 students. They are designed to offer a more personalized and flexible learning experience compared with traditional schools. It's estimated that between 1 million and 2 million U.S. students attend microschools full time, and many more attend part time.
As interest in this approach grows, a new RAND study examines common microschool models, the challenges facing microschools, evidence about their effects on students, and more. Here's an overview of the findings:
- Microschools typically are small, have multi-age classrooms, and focus on self-paced learning. But they vary tremendously in setting, size, and focus.
- Microschools seek to serve a wide range of students, including those with learning differences and students whose social, emotional, or behavioral needs are not being met in traditional learning environments.
- Microschools are free from the state and federal accountability and reporting requirements faced by public schools. This means that microschools often make decisions about how (and whether) to assess students' academic proficiency and growth on a student-by-student basis.
- Data on microschool students' backgrounds, proficiency, and academic growth are often unavailable, inconsistent, or unrepresentative. This can make it difficult to evaluate the impact of the microschool sector on student outcomes.
These insights offer an overview of the nascent microschooling landscape and highlight areas for further study to understand how this learning environment may affect students.
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The Use of AI in Health Care
Some areas of health care--such as prescription drug development and medical imaging--are already benefiting from artificial intelligence. But a gap remains between AI's potential and its adoption in the health care sector. In a recent webinar, RAND's Sean Mann and Peter Hussey discuss how this gap might be filled by AI tools, the methods used to evaluate new technology, and what the evidence says about the potential risks and benefits of using AI in health care applications.
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The Pentagon's Strategic Readiness Goals
The U.S. Department of Defense defines strategic readiness as "the ability to build, maintain, and balance warfighting capabilities and competitive advantages that ensure the DoD can achieve strategic objectives across threats and time horizons." Leaders at the Pentagon recently asked RAND researchers to examine progress toward strategic readiness objectives. The resulting report tackles three key questions: Is the strategic readiness concept sufficiently clear to DoD stakeholders? How can risk management related to strategic readiness be improved? And how can the Pentagon leverage ongoing data efforts to better inform decisionmaking?
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** RAND Recommends
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- In the Washington Post, RAND's Samuel Charap discusses the potential for a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine: This is a time when negotiations are the most sensitive and prone to derailment, he says. "We should expect zigzags ... [a] one step forward, two steps back kind of situation."
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- In an interview with CNN, RAND's Raphael Cohen speaks about recent developments of the Israel-Hamas war.
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- RAND's Beth Asch explains that--despite recent rebounds in recruiting numbers--U.S. military services still face challenges when it comes to the quality of recruits. Quality is "a true readiness issue," she says.
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** Events
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Policy Lab: Why AI Projects Fail
Wednesday, March 26, 2025 (Online)
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** Learn the Tools of Defense Policy Analysis
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Applications are open for Pardee RAND Graduate School's new Master of National Security Policy degree program. Full-time and part-time schedules are available at our campuses in Santa Monica, CA, and Arlington, VA.
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