The stakes of large-scale testing programs have grown considerably in the past decade with the enactment of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race To The Top (RTTT) legislations. A significant component of NCLB has been required reporting of annual yearly progress (AYP) of student subgroups disaggregated by sex, special education status, English…

Lack of researcher consensus on how to measure disadvantaged students' access to effective teaching has made it challenging for practitioners to draw lessons from the data. This brief aims to help policymakers understand the emerging evidence by synthesizing findings from three peer-reviewed studies that collectively span 17 states. The studies…

The author compared NCLB-prompted standards-based reforms with earlier reforms and found that earlier manifestations of standards-based reforms may have been more productive and constructive. NCLB, with its emphasis on accountability through high-stakes testing, has produced many perverse results alongside documented achievement gains, the author…

School districts throughout the United States are increasingly providing greater autonomy to local public (non-charter) school principals. In 2005-06, Chicago Public Schools initiated the Autonomous Management and Performance Schools program, granting academic, programmatic, and operational freedoms to select principals. This paper provides…