The Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) program, written into the Every Student Succeeds Act, gives up to seven state educational agencies the opportunity to launch innovative assessment pilots in their public schools, with the goal of eventual statewide implementation. As of August 2020, the U.S. Department of Education had…

Imagine a public K-12 school system where Native students and communities can thrive. The Washington Tribal Education Sovereignty then Justice Toolkit is designed to support Tribal leaders engaging in consultation and government-to-government communication with local and state education agencies. The toolkit includes: Part 1: Applying educational…

Defining and measuring success are not merely process steps, but critical conversations that shape how education is understood and delivered. They influence how individuals within and outside the system perceive the goals of education. They shape the incentives for stakeholders seeking to improve educational outcomes. Methods of measuring success…

For more than two decades, the New York Performance Standards Consortium, a coalition of 38 public high schools, has steered clear of high-stakes testing, which superficially assess student learning. Instead, the consortium's approach relies on performance-based assessments--essays, research papers, science experiments, and high-level mathematical…

Independent schools are increasingly placing significant priority on community service and understand the important messages about social and personal responsibility that these programs convey to students, along with the invaluable hands-on, real-world experience that they get in community service work. And while student community service is…

Although most assessment developers have a sense of the nature of the general student population, they often lack an understanding of the characteristics of special education students and English Language Learners (ELLs) who will participate in the assessment. The Race-to-the-Top Assessment Consortia have the rare opportunity to know who these…

In 1978, the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, a consortium of public school districts in upstate New York, was sued by the Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation because the consortium taped educational programs broadcast on local public television stations and provided copies to local schools. This case, known as…

A parent walking into a classroom in a Minnesota public school today will be presented with a different learning environment compared to that of 20 years ago. Gone are filmstrips and movie projectors and in their place are computer screens. Today's classroom is a heavy user of digital media, and much of that is accessed via the Internet. It is…

Almost non-existent five years ago, the use of online courses has grown dramatically in Maryland, with more than 25 courses now available. Online course enrollments have also increased from 31 students in 2003 to more than 600 in 2006. A major reason for this remarkable growth has been the Maryland Students Online Consortium (MSOC), a state-local…

The diverse higher education members of the Hartford Consortium for Higher Education independently partner with the Hartford Public Schools and deliver more than forty programs in the schools. These programs are varied and include such areas as college access, professional development for teachers, technology initiatives, tutoring, and science…

Discusses how higher education consortia are forming K-12 partnerships and alliances that are linking with individual public schools and their school systems. Offers the examples of the Hartford Consortium for Higher Education and Massachusetts' Five Colleges, Incorporated. Includes a list with Web sites addresses of such consortium partnerships.…

In 1996, about 750 randomly selected 4th graders, a similar number of 8th graders, and nearly 1,000 12th graders from 19 Chicago-area schools took the Third International Mathematics and Science Survey test as a separate country. Results were impressive and reinforced the good reputation of First in the World Consortium schools, located mostly in…

A description is given of interactions between institutions of higher education and the public schools that exist in a consortium known as PREPS (Program of Research and Evaluation for Public Schools). The major purpose of PREPS is to provide research and evaluation services to its member schools, with heavy emphasis upon evaluation research and…

Describing the state of the art of delivering research and evaluation assistance to rural school districts, this article addresses the philosophy, organization, function and potential of Mississippi's PREPS (Program of Research and Evaluation for Public Schools) which helps districts identify their problems and utilize a task force approach. (DS)

Describes Virginia's statewide and community electronic resource access projects, including the Blacksburg Electronic Village, connected with Virginia Tech and the Internet; a public education network; a consortium of college and university libraries; the state library's digital initiative; and a cooperative library network. (LRW)