Professional development--formal in-service training to upgrade the content knowledge and pedagogical skills of teachers--is widely viewed as an important means of improving teaching and learning. While many interventions "include" professional development, professional development was the central intervention of the two recent research and…

In this era of accountability-by-numbers, the elevated status accorded to large-scale external assessments such as the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is symptomatic of a trend towards data-driven policy initiatives in education, and the need for regular sources of outcome data to constantly feed narrow indicators of…

First the good news. There's a growing consensus that the quality of teachers and teaching is a major factor--some would say the most important school-based factor--in the quality of student learning. In sum (and this comes as no surprise to the teaching profession), good teaching matters. The bad news is that, in this highly charged climate of…

This project focuses on the policies and practices of school boards (or mayors or others who govern public schools), and how their priorities can make a tangible difference in the academic success of kids living in poor communities. Instead of focusing on deficits of poverty, the researchers wanted to stress school board action as an effective…

Educational systems in the United States are generating vast amounts of data on student achievement. This may provide researchers and policy makers with long sought-after insight on the factors explaining student performance. This study uses recent data from Washington 10th graders to examine why some students learned more math than others.…

The release of School Grades by the State of Florida in the late summer of 2010 created quite a stir. Over 500 elementary schools all over the state dropped at least one grade level. Among those schools that experienced drops, the Reading Gains and Mathematics Gains components seemed especially low. Some of the historically best performing schools…

The U.S. Department of Education released regulations governing the development of alternate assessments for students with persistent learning problems who are eligible for Modified Academic Achievement Standards (MAAS) in 2007. To date, state regular assessments or alternate assessments based on Alternate Academic Achievement Standards have not…

Recently, much attention has focused on the number of schools in the nation failing to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in raising student achievement under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The Obama Administration has projected a dramatic increase in this number as 2014--the year when 100% of students are expected to score proficient on…

What's the best estimate of student performance on the Common Core State Standards? ACT, an organization involved in developing the standards, wanted to know how well today's students are meeting them. To find out, it analyzed the test results of 256,765 11th graders who took selected forms of the ACT test in spring 2010. In its report, "A First…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine advanced coursework completion rates, Advanced Placement (AP)/International Baccalaureate (IB) testing rates, AP/IB exam passage rates, and the percentage of AP/IB exam scores at or above the criterion that may exist among Texas public high school students from 2001 to 2012 to ascertain (a) the…

More than 1 million people have watched the online video in which Salman Khan--a charming MIT math whiz, Harvard Business School graduate, and former Boston hedge-fund analyst--explains how he began tutoring his cousins in math by posting short lessons for them on YouTube. Other people began watching the lessons and sending Khan adulatory notes.…

States and school districts are searching for strategies to raise the college and career readiness of high school graduates--imperative in an era when postsecondary credentials are the key to good jobs, better pay, and stronger economies. The creation and implementation of higher graduation standards aligned to college and career expectations is…

State testing programs today are more extensive than ever, and their results are required to serve more purposes and high-stakes decisions than one might have imagined. Assessment results are used to hold schools, districts, and states accountable for student performance and to help guide a multitude of important decisions. This report describes…

Assessing the comparability of different groups is an issue facing many researchers and evaluators in a variety of settings. Commonly, null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is incorrectly used to demonstrate comparability when a non-significant result is found. This is problematic because a failure to find a difference between groups is not…

Using data from the Digest of Educational Statistics, this article argues that an intergenerational comparison is a more productive, progressive method to interpret data used to gauge the achievement gap. It applies this method by comparing the academic achievement scores and educational outcomes of African Americans over a nearly 70-year period,…