The Data Quality Campaign has released Education Data 101, a primer on the most important concepts and research related to education data. The purpose of this publication is to bring policymakers up to speed, but it also provides a nice summary of talking points for anyone involved in education. The Read more
Karin Chenoweth of Education Week recently wrote about lessons learned from schools with “unexpected” success. Excerpts of the article appear below: Educators in unexpected schools change the fundamental way schools have traditionally been organized. Back in 2000, Harvard researcher Richard Elmore argued that because teaching has primarily been an isolated, Read more
Every student, no matter where he or she lives, deserves a great teacher. States, educator preparation programs (EPPs), and K–12 leaders must work together to ensure that all teachers are learner ready on day one in the classroom. But too often, these actors do not have access to the necessary Read more
A project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, KIDS COUNT is the premier source for data on child and family well-being in the United States. KIDS COUNT examines hundreds of indicators to provide information that supports smart decisions about children and families. The graphic below shows the overall child wellbeing Read more
States create annual aggregate report cards for the public about education statewide. But can people easily find and understand these reports? In many cases, the answer is no. In summer 2016, the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) set out to discover what information it could easily find on state report cards Read more
A coalition of nine teacher preparation programs released a letter to the Department of Education and Congress calling for clear guidance to states seeking to enhance the quality of teacher preparation programs under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Urban Teachers–along with Aspire Public Schools, Blue Engine, Boston Teacher Residency, Read more
A recent paper titled Not another meeting: How performance management routines help education systems deliver on their goals for students asks what data from the field can tell us about the ways in which leaders keep their systems focused on their goals through regular conversations about progress. This paper considers Read more
A first-of-its-kind study has found that students who score at the “college-ready” level on the PARCC exam are well-positioned to earn good grades in college. The findings provide early evidence that the assessment does what it was designed to do: measure college readiness. The Massachusetts Department of Education commissioned Mathematica Read more
Previously, this blog introduced readers to the work of California’s CORE Districts. Now preliminary evidence is out, and we are able to look more closely at the use of self-report surveys of non-cognitive skills as a potential element of school accountability systems. Analysis of data from the CORE field test Read more
Below, two articles are excerpted that come to very different conclusions about the recent NAEP results for high school seniors. Education Week author Liana Heitin writes: High school seniors have lost ground in math over the last two years, according to the most recent scores on a national achievement test. Read more
A new national survey reveals large disconnects between how well parents believe their children perform academically and their actual performance. It also finds that parental aspirations for their child to go to college are much higher than data on the percentage of children who get to and through college. Results Read more
A recent report from Thomas Toch at Georgetown University analyzes the national teacher-evaluation reform movement and finds that it has been far more beneficial than its many critics would suggest. In a growing number of states and school districts, new, more meaningful evaluation systems have focused principals’ attention on instruction, Read more
A group of leading teacher preparation program providers – Deans for Impact – released a set of policy recommendations calling for outcomes-based accountability and data-informed improvement in teacher preparation. Their recommendations are consistent with the following findings: Teacher preparation programs are disconnected from local labor market needs. There is no incentive for teacher Read more
When teachers leave teaching, where do they go next? Are they getting good jobs outside of education? Or are subsequent jobs more of a lateral move? Do teachers who quit teaching also quit working? A recent article by the Brookings Institute takes a look at several data sources to see Read more
Sean Reardon and colleagues at the Graduate School of Education reviewed more than 200 million test scores to spotlight communities with the nation’s worst achievement gaps. The results show almost every school district enrolling large numbers of low-income students has an average academic performance significantly below the national grade-level average. Read more
Deans for Impact recently looked at nearly two dozen educator preparation programs and found that only six have access to student achievement data connected to the teachers they prepared. Less than a third have access to other kinds of data about their graduates’ performance, like classroom observations. The organization, in Read more