A broad range of factors go into weighing how well the nation's schools are living up to their responsibility to ensure that students are on track academically and prepared to take their place in a complex, ever-changing society. This third and final installment of "Quality Counts 2018" digs deeply into test scores, high school…

Elementary school students have a stronger grasp of U.S. history, and what it means to be a knowledgeable citizen, than they did a few years ago, new test results suggest. Part of the reason they are better informed about history and citizenship, some argue, is that they are better readers. That was the view put forward by U.S. Secretary of…

Scores on state tests have increased consistently and significantly in the five years since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) became law, and there's some evidence that gains that started in the 1990s accelerated after the law's enactment, a new report concludes. The authors of the report, which was set for release this week, are quick to say…

Not only did many industrialized countries outperform the United States in science on a recent international exam, but American students' academic achievement was also more likely to be affected by their wealth or poverty and family background than was their peers' in higher-scoring nations. That was one of several sobering findings for the United…

President Bush says that the No Child Left Behind Act is working, pointing to student-achievement results from a single subsection of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and tentative Reading First data. But the evidence available to support his claim is questionable. The data Mr. Bush cited are from just the "long-term…