Schools often track students to classes based on ability. Proponents of tracking argue it is a low-cost tool to improve learning since instruction is more effective when students are more homogeneous, while opponents argue it exacerbates initial differences in opportunities without strong evidence of efficacy. In fact, little is known about the…

Charter schools in urban environments have been scrutinized for their effectiveness. This study attempted to determine whether students attending Midwestern urban charter schools outperformed students in traditional schools on the state's accountability system over a 5-year time period. Using a quasi-experimental research design, data were…

Accountability systems have important implications for schooling. Missing from discussions about their implementation, however, are ways they affect teacher responsibility. Responsibility has been insufficiently explicated in the education literature, including its impact on teacher motivation, emotion, and behavior. We propose that a…

Value-added approaches for attributing student growth to teachers often use weighted estimates of building-level factors based on "typical" schools to represent a range of community, school, and other variables related to teacher and student work that are not easily measured directly. This study examines whether such estimates are likely…

This report explains that The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)--known since 2001 as No Child Left Behind (NCLB)--requires states to set annual objectives for increasing student achievement in reading and mathematics and closing achievement gaps among student subgroups. Under the flexibility waiver granted by the US Department of…

Due to the lack of effectiveness of the punitive school approach toward challenging behaviors (Luiselli, Putnam, Handler, & Feinberg, 2005; Reynolds, Skiba, Graham, Sheras, Conoley, & Garcia-Vazquez, 2006), public schools have searched for an innovative approach to better serve students who are at risk for academic failure and dropout/expulsion. A…

The academic progress of South Carolina student subgroups are tracked by leaders in the South Carolina Department of Education (SDE) and by South Carolina Education Oversight Committee (EOC) leaders to assure the public that South Carolina public schools are making academic progress as outlined in the Education Accountability Act of 1998 (EAA) as…

The purpose of this study was to explore and reveal the process behind how teachers that administer standards-based tests implement instructional practices in the classroom according to the accountability measures of NCLB. The study revealed how teachers in two different school settings prepared their students for the yearly standardized test. In…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires public schools in the United States to test students in grades 3-8. The author argues that this mandate has been supported by the public, in part, because of the "availability heuristic," a phenomenon which occurs when people assess the probability of an event by the ease with which instances…

The authors of the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" anticipated that a majority of school districts or schools would not be able to attain state and national achievement standards without assistance. Consequently, the Act created a major tenet known as Supplemental Educational Services (SES) programs to improve the learning outcomes of…

This "Report Card to the Public" is published in accordance with Alaska Statute 14.03.120 for the school year 2011-2012. Under state law, each school district is required to report information about its plans and performance to its community. This report includes a statewide summary of performance results. It reports the status of public…

In 2006-07, New York City, the largest school district in the United States, decided it would follow several other school systems in adopting a progress report program. Under its program, the city grades schools from A to F according to an accumulating point system based on the weighted average of measurements of school environment, students'…

Arguably the most important educational resource is teachers. Teachers and teaching quality are a central feature of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) which requires a "highly qualified teacher" in every core academic classroom. Many states and large districts also have policies in place to attract qualified teachers to…

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) asks that states "restructure" schools that fail for six years running to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward full proficiency on the part of all students by the year 2014. Although restructuring efforts by most states have been modest, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 2002, directed the School District…

The Seattle Public Schools serve one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation. The school system's enrollment represents many racial and ethnic groups and includes students from around the world who come to Seattle speaking many languages and families who came to the city generations ago. The challenge facing Seattle and all other major…