This report examines how students are performing across the entire 2020-2021 school year in reading and mathematics during the pandemic. Based on insights from millions of student assessments, the report explores key questions effected by COVID-19 in education, including: (1) How much did students grow during the 2020-2021 school year compared…

The tenth annual Boston Opportunity Agenda Report Card takes a closer look at the impact of two years of pandemic on the achievement of students on key indicators from kindergarten through college and adult education. It finds mixed results for Boston's public and public charter school students, with some areas seeing much larger changes triggered…

The ninth annual Boston Opportunity Agenda Report Card looks at how the pandemic has affected many of the indicators used to track how Boston students are doing in education from early childhood through adulthood, as well as tracking the landscape of the Opportunity Agenda's efforts to strengthen the education pipeline. This report card contains…

Notwithstanding dramatically low levels of professed religiosity in Western Europe, the religious school sector continues to thrive. One explanation for this paradox is that nowadays parents choose religious schools primarily for their higher academic reputation. Empirical evidence for this presumed denominational advantage is mixed. We examine…

Equality of educational opportunity is threatened by long-standing gaps in student achievement by race, gender, and student poverty, as well as by school sector and school poverty. The true magnitude of these gaps cannot be understood, however, unless these factors are considered simultaneously. While accounting for the effects of demographic…

This "Eighth Annual Report Card" tracks progress on Boston's goals for educating learners of all ages. The report lays out Boston Opportunity Agenda's current metrics, the baseline that has been established for the future, and the progress to be made over the course of the next five years. This report card contains the most up-to-date…

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…

This "Sixth Annual Report Card" reflects the progress that is being made throughout Boston's entire education pipeline. More than 77,000 school-age children live in the City of Boston. The vast majority, 93%, attend a school in the Boston Public Schools system, a Boston Charter public school, or a Boston Catholic school. The goal with…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act has compelled states to design school accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this Federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question. This study presents evidence on whether NCLB has influenced student…

Research has shown that students who like school have higher academic achievement and a lower incidence of disciplinary problems, absenteeism, truancy, and dropping out of school than do those who dislike school. Thus, one way to improve academic outcomes is to increase students' attraction to school. This study focused on the role of teachers in…

On July 14, 2006, the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a study that compared the performance in reading and math of 4th and 8th graders attending private and public schools. According to the NCES study, students attending private schools performed better than students attending public schools.…

The 2012 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 48th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…

The 2011 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 47th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…