In 2017 Georgia instituted a flexibility policy through which school districts enter into performance contracts with the state that grant districts waivers from state rules and allow schools and districts greater autonomy. In exchange, schools and districts must meet academic performance targets. The performance contracts are intended to…

Identifying schools that are beating the odds--schools that are exceeding academic performance expectations, given the composition of their student body--can lead to promising practices that other schools serving similar populations can implement. Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast & Islands used data on high-poverty high schools in…

The Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands conducted this study using data on public high schools in Puerto Rico from national and territory databases to compare methods for identifying beating-the-odds schools. Schools were identified by two methods, a status method that ranked high-poverty schools based on their current observed…

In 2007 Georgia instituted a flexibility policy through which school districts enter into performance contracts with the state, receiving waivers from state rules, provisions, and guidelines in exchange for agreeing to meet annual accountability targets. The performance contracts are intended to incentivize innovations that increase achievement…

These are the appendixes for the report, "District Changes in Student Achievement and Local Practice under Georgia's District and School Flexibility Policy." Five appendixes are included in the document: (1) About the study; (2) Data and methods; (3) Supporting analysis; (4) Survey instrument; and (5) Interview protocol. [For the full…

Educators and policymakers have set a goal that all students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. A substantial body of research supports the idea that the path to college and career readiness begins well before middle and high school. In an earlier policy report, ACT examined the percentage of academically far off track…

Because of national, state, and local accountability to prepare students to be college and career-ready, secondary schools are looking for ways to maximize student academic growth while in high school. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between academic growth as measured by the changes in performance from students' 8th…

Few school choice evaluations consider students who leave such programs, and fewer still consider the effects of leaving these programs as policy-relevant outcomes. Using a representative sample of students from the citywide voucher program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we analyze more than 1,000 students who leave the program during a 4-year period.…

Under the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), public schools must show consistent improvement in achievement for all students including English language learners (ELL) and students with disabilities. The assessment of ELL students and students with disabilities can present unique challenges to schools that must…

The number of schools that have access to computers and the Internet has increased rapidly since the beginning of the 1990s. However, evidence of their effectiveness as pedagogical tools to acquire reading and math skills is still the object of debate. We use repeated cross-section data from Brazil to evaluate the effect of the availability of a…

The study examined the effect of charter school attendance on annual student achievement growth in math and reading.The research described in this report is consistent with WWC evidence standards with reservations. Strengths: Matched charter school students to similar students in traditional public schools using demographic and academic…

This Information Capsule answers the most frequently asked questions about M-DCPS' academic performance during the 2009-10 school year. M-DCPS earned a performance grade of "B" in 2010 and was only four points short of an "A." Over half of the District's schools (57 percent) earned an "A." Overall, the District's…

This study explored the reading attitudes and achievement, as well as genre knowledge, of tenth, eleventh, and twelfth-grade students who participated in Scaffolded Silent Reading, Sustained Silent Reading, or a control group. The Reading and You attitude survey, Degrees of Reading Power achievement measure, and Genre Assessment were administered…

This paper profiles the student subgroup achievement and gap trends in Wisconsin for 2010. In grade 8 (the only grade in which subgroup trends were analyzed by achievement level), Wisconsin showed across-the-board gains--improvements in reading and math at the basic-and-above, proficient-and-above, and advanced levels for all racial/ethnic…

This general achievement trends profile includes information that the Center on Education Policy (CEP) and the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) obtained from states from fall 2008 through April 2009. Included herein are: (1) Bullet points summarizing key findings about achievement trends in that state at three performance…