A growing number of school districts--including large ones like those in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Hawaii--have become recent converts to new principal-evaluation systems that tie school leaders' appraisals to student test scores. As of this school year, student achievement accounts for 40 percent to 50 percent of principals' evaluations…

As states' information-collection systems grow more sophisticated, officials are grappling with where to draw the line on how "value added" data on teachers can be used. Since the adoption of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the task of establishing data systems for tracking students' year-to-year achievement gains has fallen…

With the congressional effort to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act at a standstill, schools and districts will need to stay on target toward the law's goal of 100 percent proficiency in reading and mathematics in the next six years--or else face sanctions or interventions. That process will be especially hard in 23 states that made the…

Despite academic progress, standardized tests have been a handicap in school's quest to meet the yardstick for adequate yearly progress (AYP) under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The law requires that students be tested annually in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once during high school. Schools must show sufficient gains in performance…

All states that meet federal criteria will now be allowed to take part in the U.S. Department of Education's 2-year-old experiment with "growth models," which let states measure individual students' achievement gains as a way of ensuring accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act. After originally capping participation at 10…

Scores on state tests have increased consistently and significantly in the five years since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) became law, and there's some evidence that gains that started in the 1990s accelerated after the law's enactment, a new report concludes. The authors of the report, which was set for release this week, are quick to say…

In the debate over the future of the No Child Left Behind Act, policymakers, educators, and researchers seem to agree on one thing: The federal law's accountability system should be rewritten so it rewards or sanctions schools on the basis of students' academic growth. The U.S. Department of Education recently reaffirmed the Bush administration's…

Mr. Barr, a Democratic political organizer who turned charter school mogul, has waged a contentious, two-year campaign to persuade leaders in the nation's second-largest school system to let him run one or more troubled high schools. Mr. Barr, with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, set to assume some control of the district on Jan. 1, 2007, where he may…

Many people predicted that 2005 would be the year that schools nationwide began feeling the bite of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, as states ratcheted up their performance targets and more schools failed to meet those benchmarks. But such dire predictions are not playing out uniformly across the states. Of the 33 states and the District of…

In the St. Paul, Minnesota public schools, "pullout" teaching is frowned upon. Instead, "collaboration" is the favored method when it comes to teaching English-language learners. For three of the past four years, the district has made adequate yearly progress for its English-language learners under the federal No Child Left…