This study is based on collaboration between a school and a university on professional development training of 4th and 5th grade elementary school teachers in a southeastern state in the USA. The study was three-pronged and focused on teacher knowledge, pedagogy, and student achievement. We examined how the building of teacher capacity affected…

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. Recently, NWEA completed a concordance study to connect the scales of the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) reading and math tests with those of the MAP…

This quantitative study reviews the impact on student achievement following professional development on the principles of formative assessment. The study compared mathematics and reading performance data from student populations with teachers who received training in formative assessment to performance data from student populations with teachers…

The purpose of this study was to address the extent to which adequacy litigation functions as a means for improving student achievement, particularly among low-income and minority students. The study extended theory established in prior studies, and took into account the idea that change takes several years to realize and that sufficient time to…

This fact sheet provides demographic information for the young Dual Language Learner (DLL) population in Virginia, based on Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysis of U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) data pooled over the 2011-15 period. DLLs, defined as children ages 8 and under with at least one parent who speaks a language…

Students with disabilities have traditionally achieved to a lesser degree than have their nondisabled peers. Since the 1950s the federal government has enacted laws to provide free, appropriate public education to students with disabilities. In the first decade of the 21st; Century the government has produced legislation requiring schools to be…

Based on the findings of a recent three-year study by Dominican University's Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, the authors can confirm what many librarians have long suspected: students who take part in their local library's summer reading program significantly improve their reading skills. This article describes the results of…

Most U.S. states have developed sophisticated assessment programs to evaluate student achievement and hold schools, teachers, and students accountable for learning important content. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2002) has placed further pressure on educators and administrators to ensure that all students are learning. Yet, some…

"Taking Stock and Pushing Forward" (2014) reports states' progress toward the Challenge to Lead 2020 Goals for Education. State-specific documents report on student achievement as well as essential state policies to improve it. Among the many metrics: how states are improving achievement on NAEP, high school graduation rates, and access…

Guided by a new framework, the NAEP science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts related to properties and changes of matter, forms…

This study examined the effects of aligning the "Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL)" English Framework with Bloom's Taxonomy on student achievement. Changes prompted by "No Child Left Behind" legislation increased accountability for student success, as well as mandated testing to determine annual academic growth of all…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between principals' perceptions of their learning-centered leadership behaviors and one year of reading achievement scores. Perceptions of principals were gathered from 31 out of 42 elementary schools in a district located in Central Virginia. This study explored the relationship between…

This report investigates progress in Virginia public schools in satisfying the requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 that every student be proficient in reading and math by 2014. It develops a variable change model that uses observed baseline proficiency and proficiency trends at individual schools to forecast gains for six subgroups…

This year the Center on Education Policy analyzed data on the achievement of different groups of students in two distinct ways. First, it looked at grade 4 test results to determine whether the performance of various groups improved at three achievement levels--basic and above, proficient and above, and advanced. Second, it looked at gaps between…

This report compares Virginia's reading and mathematics performance on the most recent administrations of the state assessment with performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). To indicate how Virginia is doing in narrowing the academic achievement gap between African American and Latino students and their white, middle…