There is a significant need for kindergarten entry assessments (KEA) that meet state education agency (SEA) requirements and are psychometrically sound measures of a broad range of school readiness domains such as language, literacy, math, science, executive function, and social-emotional skills. Research Findings: In this paper, we describe five…

The Common Core of Data (CCD) is a national statistical program that collects and compiles administrative data from SEAs covering the universe of all public elementary and secondary schools and school districts in the United States. The first CCD collection was for SY 1986-87. The predecessor to CCD was the Elementary and Secondary General…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 forced school districts to become more accountable by requiring all students to read on grade level by the year 2014. However, President Obama's educational policy shift is allowing states to develop their own accountability and improvement system. This study examined fourth and eighth grade math…

In response to the continued pressure placed on American public schools to increase academic achievement, some schools have begun to reorganize instructional environments in an effort to improve student outcomes. The current study examined one such elementary school that implemented a departmentalized model of instruction in fourth and fifth-grade…

Why has large-scale standardised testing attracted such a bad press? Why has pedagogic benefit to be derived from test results been downplayed? The paper investigates this question by first surveying the pros and cons of testing in the literature, and goes on to examine educators' responses to standardised, large-scale tests in a sample of low…

With the voluntary Common Core State Standards (CCSS), states have sought to establish clear, high expectations that are consistent across participating states and that signal what K-12 students should learn in mathematics and English language arts (ELA) to be prepared for college and careers. As of July 2013, the CCSS have been adopted by 45…

States are in a crucial phase of implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which outline the knowledge and skills that students in grades kindergarten through 12 are expected to learn in mathematics and English language arts (ELA) to be prepared for college and careers. As of July 2013, 45 states and the District of Columbia have…

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires that two accountability strategies--raising standards and public pressure through publicizing performance data--be implemented simultaneously. However, when coupled, they may produce an inappropriate consequence for public opinion. The public may misunderstand the drop in achievement that occurs when the bar is…

This study explored the relationships among the components of the Arizona Department of Education's new teacher evaluation model, with a particular focus on the extent to which ratings from the state model's teacher observation instrument differentiated higher and lower performance. The study used teacher-level evaluation data collected by the…

This report presents findings on the numbers of public school students and staff in the United States and other jurisdictions in school year 2009-10, using data from the State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education of the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey system. The CCD is an annual collection of data that are reported by state…

The Common Core of Data (CCD) is an annual collection of public elementary and secondary education data administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and its collection agent, the U.S. Census Bureau. Data for CCD surveys are provided by state education agencies (SEAs). This report presents summary data from the Pilot Teacher…