The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation's Report Card, is the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what students know about mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, U.S. history, and technology and engineering literacy. This fact sheet reports…

Since the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), test-based accountability has been an organizing principle--perhaps "the" organizing principle--of efforts to improve American schools. But lately, accountability has been under fire from many critics, including Common Core opponents and those calling for more multifaceted…

"Commitment and Common Sense" tells the inside story of how Massachusetts became a national model for education. Twelve years after the passage of the state's comprehensive education reform law in 1993, Bay State student scores rose to the top of "the nation's report card" (the National Assessment of Educational Progress) in…

Several national and international studies have indicated that there is an achievement gap between student literary reading and student informational reading, with the gap favoring literary reading. One plausible explanation for this gap is that reading informational text has been neglected in early grades in the U.S. (Dreher, 2003; Kletzien &…

This study presented a secondary analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) dataset. The paper explored the differences between fourth grade reading scores by examining (1) how often the fourth graders discuss their school work at home with family and (2) how often the fourth graders discuss what they were reading with…

Kansas ranks 10th in the nation on an average of 15 indicators of student success, but has been improving much slower than most states. Since 2008, total funding per pupil in Kansas has increased less than half as much as the U.S. average, and less than one-quarter as much as the top achieving states. "There is growing evidence that as Kansas…

The number of charter schools grew rapidly for a quarter-century after the first charter opened its doors in 1992. But since 2016, the rate of increase has slowed. Is the pause related to a decline in charter effectiveness? To find out, the authors tracked changes in student performance at charter and district schools on the National Assessment of…

Countries around the world are striving to improve their educational systems with a view to improving their economy and society. In this global competition, national and international test results are of considerable interest. In this paper, we show that national testing in England and the USA have shown little or no improvement over the years.…

As an early Common Core booster, Michael Petrilli had hoped that by now--10 years after most states adopted the standards--the nation's schools would have logged tangible improvements in teaching and learning that resulted in higher student achievement. In this article, Petrilli reviews what Common Core is and discusses the work ahead that is…

Prior research suggests that males outperform females, on average, on multiple-choice items compared to their relative performance on constructed-response items. This paper characterizes the extent to which gender achievement gaps on state accountability tests across the United States are associated with those tests' item formats. Using roughly 8…

This 22nd edition of "Quality Counts" offers a fresh take on the annual top-to-bottom ranking of the nation's school systems on a state-by-state basis published by "Education Week". The first of three "Quality Counts" reports being rolled out over the course of the year, "Grading the States" aims to…

An assumption of culture-based education with respect to American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children is that discontinuity between home and school cultures is responsible for educational underachievement. Using data from the 2009 round of the National Indian Education Study, a subset of the larger National Assessment of Education Progress…

Despite consistently strong performances among NH 4th graders on the NAEP assessments, large disparities have been observed among NH elementary students on the NECAP assessments based on race and SES. The current study assessed the effectiveness of NH elementary schools, as defined by the effective schools research. Of the 209 elementary schools…

This data book profiles noteworthy academic events, trends and outcomes at the state and complex-area level. It includes tables, figures and narrative sections related to demographic, financial and educational performance. A list of resources is provided. [For " Hawaii Department of Education Data Book, 2020. 31st Annual Report," see…

This study investigated the type and level of teacher credentials that impact fourth-grade reading achievement as reported by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Data analyses revealed a significant statistical difference existed among fourth-grade reading achievement scores for the following teacher quality variables: National Board…