Since No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was enacted into federal law in 2002, states have been required to test students in grades 3 through 8 and again in high school to assess math and reading achievement. The federal law also asks states to establish the performance level students must reach on the exams in order to be identified as…

The Common Core State Standards, released in 2010, were rapidly adopted by more than 40 states. Champions maintained that these rigorous standards would transform American education, but the initiative went on to encounter a bumpy path. A decade on, what are we to make of this ambitious effort? What kind of impact, if any, has it had on the…

Some form of a short interrupted time series (ITS) is often used to evaluate state and national programs. An ITS design with a single treatment group assumes that the pretest functional form can be validly estimated and extrapolated into the postintervention period where it provides a valid counterfactual. This assumption is problematic. Ambiguous…

The author of this paper describes the responsibilities of the National Assessment Governing Board, of which she served as a member from November 1997 to September 2004. The Board is unlike any other board of which she has been a member. At the quarterly meetings, the Board not only discusses and makes major policy decisions but determines the…

More than seven years ago, President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) into law. Sweeping calls for testing, intervening in persistently low-performing schools, and policing teacher quality made it the most ambitious legislation on K-12 schooling in American history. The law, due for congressional reauthorization in 2007, still…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) permits the Secretary of Education to use NAEP achievement level scores, in concert with other data, to confirm state testing results. The U.S. Department of Education has not yet published a guidance document describing how NAEP might be used appropriately. A review of the literature from the Department and…

This policy research document is intended for Oklahoma policymakers to use when examining possible changes to the state assessment's alignment with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The 2009 NAEP test is not yet in existence, so the purpose of this report is to give policymakers a head start in determining where they might,…

This policy research document is intended for New Mexico policymakers to use when examining possible changes to the state assessment's alignment with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The 2009 NAEP test is not yet in existence, so the purpose of this report is to give policymakers a head start in determining where they might,…

This policy research document is intended for Arkansas policymakers to use when examining possible changes to the Arkansas state assessment's alignment with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The 2009 NAEP test is not yet in existence, so the purpose of this report is to give policymakers a head start in determining where they…

Under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, the administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) became mandatory for all states in mathematics and reading for grades four and eight. Under NCLB the stated role and purpose of collecting achievement data from states varies from being a "discussion tool" to a…

Three documents related to the passage of Public Law 102-62 are presented. The first document is the House of Representatives Report 102-104, a report of the Committee on Education and Labor regarding the establishment of a National Council on Education Standards and Testing. The Council would be established to determine whether standards for…