Background & Context: Accurate, reliable, and scalable measurement of classroom quality is critical to ensure that children benefit from early childhood programs. Early childhood classroom quality is most commonly measured using classroom observation tools serving multiple purposes including (1) teacher support (e.g., coaching, professional…

The cheating scandal that has rocked the 48,000-student Atlanta school system was an egregious, but not entirely unexpected, byproduct of accountability pressures, many testing experts say. The reason: As long as test scores are used in any field to make decisions on rewards or punishments, including for schools or educators, a small percentage of…

In this article, we examine how the federal, state, and district policy environments affect the decisions and work of principals and teachers. Specifically, we examine principal and teacher perceptions of policies and practices focused on: (1) increasing the overall supply of qualified teachers; (2) recruiting qualified teachers; (3) distributing…

This report synthesizes findings from five years of state-level research and local case studies of school restructuring by the Center on Education Policy (CEP). The research reported here began in Michigan in the summer and fall of 2004 and gradually expanded to include five additional states--California, Georgia, Maryland, New York, and Ohio--as…

This booklet comprises excerpts from the proceedings of a conference held in Maryland to explore the related themes of accountability and the evaluation of compensatory education. Participants at the conference were administrators, teachers, aides, and parents who met in small-group work sessions. The conference is judged to have succeeded in…

Historically many students with disabilities did not participate in accountability systems. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requires that students in all targeted subgroups, including students with disabilities, have the opportunity to learn challenging material that is linked to content standards and to participate in statewide…

This journal chronicles a sample of the papers and presentations delivered during previous annual meetings of the Maryland Association for Institutional Research on the fifth anniversary of that association. A first paper, one from the first annual meeting in 1987 titled "Environmental Scanning: Assessing Local Business Training Needs"…

This study on accountability designs for underperforming schools focuses on probation as a tool for policy. Findings are based on the analysis of state performance data, the reading of approximately 100 school improvement plans, and the study of 11 focal schools in Maryland and Kentucky. Test-score data from Maryland show that probation is…

Many students with disabilities need to use accommodations to meaningfully access instruction and to be appropriately assessed. During the past decade, the use of assessment accommodations has dramatically increased the participation rates of students with disabilities in statewide testing. Assessment accommodations can be defined as "changes…