The Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) provided states with newfound flexibility on accountability measures and school improvement strategies. Many policy experts have analyzed states' ESSA plans, which explain how states use their federal funds under various provisions of the new law, as well as the approaches states take to identify and rate…

Although there is a growing recognition that the traditional teacher salary schedule does not reward the most effective teachers, most U.S. school districts don't offer teacher incentives for improving student performance and the vast majority of teachers actually oppose such a plan. This Information Capsule reviewed recent studies conducted on…

"Quality Counts 2008" reintroduces state grades in six key areas, from the Chance-for-Success Index to the teaching profession. This special issue of "Education Week" includes the following articles: (1) Human Resources a Weak Spot (Lynn Olson); (2) Teacher Salaries, Looking at Comparable Jobs (Christopher B. Swanson); (3) Data…

This policy brief describes how the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) has approached the objectives of educational equity and adequacy over the past decade and a half, and reveals how their current finance research has begun to explicitly link the level and use of resources with strategies that districts and schools can deploy to…

In response to ongoing court battles regarding the adequacy and equity of Arkansas' education system, the state's lawmakers have effected school reforms in many areas over the past few years, including nearly a 30 percent increase in educational expenditures from 2003-04 to 2004-05. The authors distributed a confidential survey to all 254 school…