The purpose of this report is to summarize the key elements of school and district level Performance Index scores (PI scores) for the 50 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.) across the United States. PI scores are partial or overall summative ratings of schools or districts currently used across US state accountability systems to assess…

High school graduation rates in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have shown remarkable improvements over the past 16 years. Students used to be about as likely to drop out as they were to graduate; now they are three times as likely to graduate as to drop out. Moreover, recent large improvements in the percentage of students on-track to graduate…

Two key measures to determine the quality of higher education are the performance of students and the accreditation of a programme's quality. We analyse the difference in the distributions of the student's scores in a standardised test of economics knowledge between accredited and non-accredited undergraduate economics programmes in a…

This is the 31st edition of the "KIDS COUNT Data Book." The Annie E. Casey Foundation has published this comprehensive assessment of the well-being of children in the United States every year since 1990, during periods of growth and recession and in times of relative prosperity and great anxiety. But since the Foundation began publishing…

This report updates the December, 2011 report "AYP Results for 2010-11" to include AYP data from school year 2010-11 for New York State. Several numbers throughout the report have changed as a result of the new data from New York. Most notably, the estimated percentage of all public schools in the nation that did not make AYP for 2011 has been…

Educational access in developing countries has improved significantly in recent years, but less evidence is available on learning and learning progress in comparative perspective. This paper employs data from Young Lives to examine levels and trends in cognitive skill development and the links to enrolment in school across the four study countries…

This report constructs a model public agenda to address the mounting challenges facing California higher education. It is intended to inspire broad discussion potentially leading to an official public agenda for California higher education. The report describes some of the structural barriers that are preventing more dramatic progress in meeting…

In 1999, California was among the first schools in the nation to initiate an accountability model for public education using a method for system measurement of academic improvement constructed on the bedrock of standards-based education. The State also included a new twist...sanctions. Schools that failed to make expected progress, as measured…

Typically, achievement gaps between groups of students are measured as either differences in average scores or differences in proficiency rates. But, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers have long recognized that these approaches don't tell the whole story. Average scores, for example, are good at summarizing trends but can mask real…

Nationwide, from 2005 to 2010, 1.6 minority (non-white) students enrolled in college for every additional white student who enrolled. In the SREB (Southern Regional Education Board) region that meant 700,312 more minority college students and 411,915 more white college students. Increases in minority student enrollment accounted for almost…

This report explores a new latent variable regression 4-level hierarchical model for monitoring school performance over time using multisite multiple-cohorts longitudinal data. This kind of data set has a 4-level hierarchical structure: time-series observation nested within students who are nested within different cohorts of students. These…

For a second year in a row, Maryland ranked first nationwide in the percentage of public school students scoring 3 or higher on at least one AP (Advanced Placement) exam. A score of 3 or higher on the 5-point scale is considered mastery of college-level work. Maryland also continues to show strong gains in the number of students taking an AP exam,…

Policymakers aiming to close the well-documented achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students have increasingly turned their attention to issues of teacher quality. A number of studies have demonstrated that teachers are inequitably distributed across student subgroups by input measures like experience and qualifications, as well…

Historically, researchers have identified that reading outcomes for students in upper grades who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) have typically rested around the late 3rd to early 4th grade. In recent years, wide-scale state-level testing has called into question these prognostications. The authors conducted a descriptive, multiunit,…

In order to ensure that American students are competitive with students in other countries, since the 1980s, U.S. policymakers have been trying to improve the K-12 public school system. Recent reform efforts have led to the current high-stakes testing movement, which measures student achievement and school effectiveness mainly by standardized test…