The Center for Positive Practices (CPP) conducted an analysis and synthesis of K-12 educational achievement gaps in New Mexico. The white paper was requested by the New Mexico based Coalition for the Majority, which includes various institutions, organizations and individuals supporting the New Mexico English Learner Teacher Preparation Act. The…

Randomized experiments are often considered the strongest designs to study the impact of educational interventions. Perhaps the most prevalent class of designs used in large scale education experiments is the cluster randomized design in which entire schools are assigned to treatments. In cluster randomized trials (CRTs) that assign schools to…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) permits the Secretary of Education to use NAEP achievement level scores, in concert with other data, to confirm state testing results. The U.S. Department of Education has not yet published a guidance document describing how NAEP might be used appropriately. A review of the literature from the Department and…

This article recounts the battle in the "math wars" that took place in Massachusetts, United States in 1999-2000 over the scope, content and teaching of the state's K-12 mathematics curriculum. Harsh controversies arose between the partisans of a "reform-math" movement stressing an undefined "conceptual understanding"…

On July 14, 2006, the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a study that compared the performance in reading and math of 4th and 8th graders attending private and public schools. According to the NCES study, students attending private schools performed better than students attending public schools.…

Compares Asian and white eighth graders' performance on reading and math test scores and grades. Results indicate that the difference between these two groups can be explained by family background. Whites and Asians differed substantially in their grade performance, suggesting that cultural and behavioral differences may be an important influence.…

With the mandate of "No Child Left Behind," high-stakes achievement testing is firmly in place in every state. The few studies that have explored the effectiveness of high-stakes testing using NAEP scores have yielded mixed results. This study considered state demographic characteristics for each NAEP testing period in reading, writing,…

The paper summarizes a National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report, "Reading, Science and Mathematic Trends: A Closer Look," in which achievement trends are compared in several subjects for 4th, 8th, and 11th grade black students, white students, low achievers, and high achievers. Findings indicate that while overall…