New teacher evaluation systems have emerged as the cornerstone of the recent movement to improve public school teaching. Fueled by incentives from the federal government, state and local policymakers have sought to replace the often-cursory evaluation models of the past with more comprehensive ones. In contrast to past evaluations, which often…

Pressures on school leaders to reform are pervasive within the United States. Prior studies show that superintendents who provide clear expectations and goals, collaborate, ensure quality professional development, and attend to curriculum alignment develop effective building leaders (Marzano & Waters, 2009; Wahlstrom, Louis, Leithwood, &…

This final audit report covers the results of the review of five State educational agencies' monitoring plans and awarding processes for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and regular School Improvement Grants funds that the State educational agencies awarded for fiscal year 2009 (for use during school year 2010-2011). The objectives…

The purpose for this study was to determine the influence on achievement and classification rate into special education of racially, culturally, ethnically, linguistically diverse students following the use of a district-designed response to intervention (RtI) structure by examining local processes that may contribute to student achievement and…

Using interviews with district and school personnel and documents from state and district web sites in three districts in New York State, the study examines practices for identifying learning disabilities among students who are English language learners and the challenges that arise. Specifically, two research questions guided the project: (1)…

This State-specific summary report serves as an assessment of New York's Year 1 Race to the Top implementation, highlighting successes and accomplishments, identifying challenges, and providing lessons learned from implementation to date. New York significantly increased its capacity to provide support to its local educational agencies (LEAs). At…

This report summarizes efforts by the state of New York to ensure the accuracy and integrity of data reported by school districts. The Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) has taken the lead in reviewing these data, focusing on the uses of attendance and enrollment data and making recommendations for improvement in state systems and local…

The paper initially describes the sources of uncertainty in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data and standard errors. As NAEP sample sizes have increased, greater precision has been attained by the program. For this reason, exclusion effects are increasingly important. Two scenarios of revised NAEP results are presented (for New…

In the spring of 1986, New York City began using the Metropolitan Achievement Test-6 (MAT-6) series to assess achievement in mathematics as part of a continuing end-of-year testing program. During the first two years of the program, appropriate levels of the shelf version of MAT-6 (Forms L and M) were administered to second through eighth graders.…