U.S. education leaders have spent decades highlighting and attempting to close achievement gaps among demographic groups. The gaps between African-American and Latino students compared to their white and Asian peers, as well as the gaps between low-income students and others, are among the most pernicious. In 2017, Oak Foundation commissioned…

Assessing students at kindergarten entry allows teachers to effectively plan instruction that meets individual student needs, and those of the class as a whole. Maryland uses Ready for Kindergarten (R4K): Maryland's Comprehensive Early Childhood Assessment System, a single coordinated system for measuring the knowledge, skills, and behaviors and…

Based on the 2018-2019 Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) results, nearly half (47%) of all entering kindergarten children in Maryland displayed the foundational skills indicating they are fully ready for kindergarten. A third (33%) are approaching readiness. Twenty percent of children are assessed with emerging readiness skills. The school…

Urban school districts are comprised of many diverse high school environments including comprehensive neighborhood schools as well as a variety of smaller alternative models that focus on innovative practices, behavior remediation, or academic recovery. In terms of enrollment distribution, urban school districts are increasingly offering…

Based on Maryland's 2017-2018 Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) results, nearly half of all entering kindergarten children show foundational skills indicating they are fully ready for kindergarten, more than a third are approaching readiness, and 18% have emerging readiness skills. Results for the 2017-2018 school year show a slight increase…

Since 1986, Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) has conducted an annual attrition study to track the number and percent of students in Texas who are lost from public secondary school enrollment prior to graduation. The study builds on the series of studies that began when IDRA conducted the first comprehensive study of school…

No Child Left Behind's mandated high-stakes testing and accountability policies have pervaded districts and schools nationwide. To examine student progress and graduation in the midst of first generation Texas-style accountability, this study tracked individuals in a longitudinal dataset of over 45,000 high school students in the Houston…

Graduation rates are a fundamental indicator of whether or not the nation's public school system is doing what it is intended to do: enroll, engage, and educate youth to be productive members of society. Since almost 90 percent of the fastest-growing and highest-paying jobs require some postsecondary education, having a high school diploma and the…

This paper analyzes the incentives and responses of public schools in the context of an educational reform. The literature on the effect of voucher programs on public schools typically focuses on student and mean school scores. This paper tries to go inside the black box to investigate some of the ways in which schools facing the Florida voucher…

One out of every six public school students in the U.S. is African American. The achievement of African American students as a group will have a significant impact on the nation's economic strength and social well-being. This brief looks at the performance of African American students on state reading and mathematics tests and considers the policy…

In grade 8 (the only grade in which subgroup trends were analyzed by achievement level), Missouri showed across-the-board gains--improvements in both reading and math at the basic, proficient and advanced levels for all racial/ethnic subgroups, low income students, and boys and girls. Results on achievement gaps were mixed. Comparable data were…

This paper profiles the student subgroup achievement and gap trends in Ohio for 2010. In grade 8 math (the only grade in which subgroup trends were analyzed by achievement level), Ohio showed a clear trend of gains for all major subgroups at the basic-and-above, proficient-and-above, and advanced levels, with one exception. In grade 8 reading,…

This paper profiles the student subgroup achievement and gap trends in Mississippi for 2010. Mississippi made changes to its state testing program in the 2007-08 school year. Therefore, subgroup and achievement gap trends could not be calculated because fewer than three consecutive years of data were available, too short a period to constitute a…

This paper profiles the student subgroup achievement and gap trends in Nevada for 2010. In grade 8 (the only grade in which subgroup trends were analyzed by achievement level), Nevada showed across-the-board gains--improvements in both reading and math at the basic, proficient and advanced levels for all racial/ethnic subgroups, low income…

In New Jersey, achievement gaps narrowed in grade 11 reading and math for all major subgroups, with one exception. Comparable data for grade 11 by subgroup were available for 2002-2009, with a few exceptions. Because the state changed its tests at grades 4 and 8 in recent years, there were too few years of comparable data to determine trends at…