In December 2015, President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaced No Child Left Behind (NCLB), as the nation's major law governing public schools. ESSA retains the requirement that states test all students in reading and math in grades three through eight and once in high school, as well as the requirement that…

Talented leaders are essential to building and sustaining successful organizations. This is especially true for schools, where principal leadership plays a major role in fostering student success. Research shows that principals are a significant school-level factor affecting student achievement, second only to classroom teachers. Like other types…

The purpose of the "District Self-Assessment Tool" is to provide school district and community stakeholders with an approach for assessing district capacity to support a college readiness indicator system and track progress over time. The tool draws on lessons from the collective implementation experiences of the four College Readiness…

In partnership with the National Charter School Resource Center (NCSRC), the National Association for Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) has been conducting authorizer assessments over the past six years. However, the correlation between high-quality authorization practices and charter school impact has largely been unexplored. This report uses a…

This report highlights 10 of the most advanced and talked-about teacher evaluation systems nationally: Delaware; Rhode Island; Tennessee; Hillsborough County, Florida; Houston, Texas; New Haven, Connecticut; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Washington, DC (referred to throughout just as Washington); Achievement First (a charter management organization,…

Teachers have the greatest school-based effect on the achievement of any child in their classrooms, but highly effective principals can positively affect the achievement of every student in their schools. The difference between a highly effective principal and an average one is equal to two-to-seven months of extra learning per year for each child…

This latest brief updates education leaders on the key policies the 13 (Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia) Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states plan to implement under federal waivers to No Child Left Behind. It details,…

Purpose: The expansion of alternative education, globally, has coincided with a shift towards greater accountability for ensuring educational access and opportunity, high academic standards and increased graduation rates. While studies suggest the pervasive influence of accountability may be redefining how school leaders provide meaningful…

Cities around the country are building systems that seek to make the most of public and private resources to provide widespread, high-quality, out-of-school time opportunities. Local officials are leading these efforts because participation in OST programs not only benefits young people but also the cities in which they live, with the potential to…

This brief report offers analysis of ACT and SAT results from 2008 to 2013 in the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) region. The brief focuses on the increase in test participation rates and points to policies that SREB states initiated that affected these rates. Five SREB states currently require 100 percent student participation on the…

For the past decade, MDRC has evaluated a number of interventions designed to improve the outcomes of community college students, including enhanced counseling, learning communities, and financial incentives. Encouragingly, many of these strategies have produced positive effects, affirming that changes in institutional practices and policies can…

Higher-education institutions in Texas are increasingly exploring innovative approaches to structuring and delivering degree programs. Several institutions have developed competency-based degree programs, which aim to offer new pathways for students to obtain postsecondary credentials and to reduce higher-education costs for students by focusing…

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools were held almost exclusively accountable for absolute levels of student performance. But that meant that even schools that were making great strides with students were still labeled as "failing," just because the students had not yet made it all the way to a "proficient" level…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Another Positive Step for ESEA Reauthorization: Testifying Before Congress, Duncan Calls for Reauthorization in 2010,…

Texas and North Carolina have exhibited strong levels of commitment to define and enforce standards of competent performance in the teaching profession. To make up for a prior lack of definition of what constitutes teacher effectiveness, both states have developed similar systems of teacher appraisal. In North Carolina, the Teacher Performance…