We study the impact of post-1990 school finance reforms, during the so-called "adequacy" era, on absolute and relative spending and achievement in low-income school districts. Using an event study research design that exploits the apparent randomness of reform timing, we show that reforms lead to sharp, immediate, and sustained increases…

This study used a secondary analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2003 and 2013 8th grade mathematics scores to explore relationships between parents' education and their eighth-grade students' mathematics achievement. Information from the NAEP database identified parents' educational level and students' eligibility…

Governments and their policy decisions inevitably influence the pedagogical practices of teachers. There have been considerable curriculum changes and national reforms in Australia with the implementation of two very different national curricula documents in the early childhood sector in the last decade. The political landscape in Western…

We use a quadratic equation to estimate trends in cohort performances in the charter and district sectors on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 4th and 8th grade between 2005 and 2017. Data consist of over four million test observations of nationally representative samples of students on seven separate math and reading tests. We…

Papay (2011) noticed that teacher value-added measures (VAMs) from a statistical model using the most common pre/post testing timeframe--current-year spring relative to previous spring (SS)--are essentially unrelated to those same teachers' VAMs when instead using next-fall relative to current-fall (FF). This is concerning since this choice--made…

Education standards do not flop spectacularly. Their failure gives rise to nothing like the black-and-white films of early aeronautical experiments: no missiles exploding on launch pads or planes tumbling from the sky. But 10 years after 46 of the 50 states adopted the Common Core standards, the lack of evidence that they have improved student…

Measuring Early Learning Quality & Outcomes (MELQO) was initiated to address needs for child development and quality of early childhood education (ECE) data, specifically for low- and middle-income countries. Drawing from existing tools, MELQO convened a consortium to create open-source tools to be adapted to national contexts, simultaneously…

This study estimates racial/ethnic discipline gaps, using multiple measures of school discipline outcomes, in nearly all school districts in the United States with data collected by the Office of Civil Rights between 2013 and 2014. Just like racial/ethnic achievement gaps, discipline gaps also vary substantially, ranging from negative to greater…

With schools coming under pressure to perform and produce outcomes, the caring practices of the institution have been increasingly framed around issues of achievement, excellence and outcomes. In this article, we examine how the performativity-driven practices of care impact on the possibilities of social inclusion for marginalised students.…

Since the launch of the Michigan Achieves! campaign, the Education Trust-Midwest (ETM) has tracked Michigan's performance and progress towards the goal of becoming a top ten state for education opportunity and achievement, focusing on key data-driven indicators. It's important for Michiganders to understand how the state's students are performing…

The introduction of the Annual National Assessment (ANA) programme by the South African education department was met with much resistance from unions with some stating that it is not matched well to the curriculum. In this small-scale study, I compare the differences in outcomes between the internal summative assessment and the ANA for Grade 9…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading regularly collects achievement information on representative samples of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Through The Nation's Report Card, the NAEP Reading Assessment reports how well students perform in reading various texts and responding to those texts by answering…

The reading framework for the 2017 NAEP describes the types of texts and questions that should be included in the assessment, as well as how the questions should be designed and scored. The assessment measures students' reading comprehension and ability to apply vocabulary knowledge by having them read passages in English and answer questions…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is an integral measure of academic progress over time. It is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what our nation's students know and can do in various subjects such as civics, mathematics, reading, science, technology and engineering literacy, U.S. history, and…

This study explored students' feelings during the Australian National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy. It features student voice depicted as self-drawn images accompanied by words as they journeyed through four phases of the NAPLAN process: preparation, participation, completion and results. The 34 students in Years 3, 5 and 7 attended…