Writing for the Hechinger Report, Jill Barshay recently reviewed a new index being used in Chicago to identify high schools with the best outcomes. Excerpts from the piece appear below: Parents are often stymied by the process of picking a good school for their kids. Word-of-mouth recommendations can be misleading. High test scores provide only Read more about Researchers Pinpoint Three Elements of Effective Schools[…]
An interactive data tool from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University creates the first database that attempts to measure the performance of every elementary and middle school in the country. The data set not only provides academic achievement for schools, districts, and states around the country, but it also allows those entities to be Read more about New Data Tool Rates ‘Educational Opportunity’ Offered in Nation’s Schools, Districts[…]
The nonprofit Collaborative for Student Success has launched Assessment HQ, a unique online platform that takes the guesswork and risk of misinformation out of understanding state annual assessments by providing transparency on student proficiency and state testing decisions. Assessment HQ highlights state-reported student performance results in mathematics and English language arts (ELA) by student demographics Read more about Assessment HQ launches State Assessment Site[…]
Earlier this month, John White, Louisiana state superintendent of education and board chair of Chiefs for Change, wrote a piece for the Washington Post that explored the progress made in America’s public schools over the past decade. Excerpts appear below: On the extremes of the right and the left, there is a growing desire to Read more about What’s Working in America’s Public Schools[…]
New data from researchers at Stanford, based on some 300 million elementary-school test scores across more than 11,000 school districts, reveals the school districts where children are showing the most growth. The results do not follow conventional wisdom. Districts with high growth are scattered across the country, in contrast with sharp geographic divisions on proficiency Read more about School Districts where Students Learn Most[…]
For more than a decade, Achieve has issued an annual 50-state report on each state’s adoption of college- and career-ready (CCR) policies as reflected in state standards, graduation requirements, assessments, and accountability systems. Having the right policies is necessary to ensure that students graduate academically prepared for college and careers, but policy alone is insufficient. Read more about States’ Accountability Systems Flawed for College Readiness, Report Finds[…]
A study, published in the journal Education Next, finds that since 2011, 45 states have raised the levels at which students are considered “proficient” on state tests. Thirty-six of the 45 did so within just the last two years. The report is the seventh in a series that examines states’ proficiency rates over the past Read more about States Are Raising the Bar[…]
A recent article by Education Next examines the correlation between poverty and mediocre test scores in the United States. At a time when the national conversation is focused on lagging upward mobility and yawning income inequality, it is no surprise that many educators point to poverty as the explanation for American students’ mediocre test scores Read more about Poverty Cannot Explain America’s Mediocre Test Scores[…]
A recent response to the Nation’s Report Card results by the Obama Administration calls for a reduction of redundant tests, in order to improve the nation’s scores in reading and mathematics. Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, believes that this action is “an unfortunate and tragically oversimplified response to the challenges facing our Read more about Opinion: Schools need to Improve, not Tests[…]
New results from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), or Nation’s Report Card, show a slowing or drop of both fourth-grade and eighth-grade students scores for 2015. This is the first recorded decline in scores since the assessment started being administered in 1990. The new results — on a scale of Read more about The Nation’s Report Card shows U.S. Scores Slipping for Reading and Math[…]
A new report by the education reform organization Achieve finds large “honesty gaps” between state-reported proficiency rates in math and reading compared to those on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is also known as the Nation’s Report Card. The report, Proficient vs. Prepared: Disparities Between State Tests and the 2013 National Assessment Read more about Achieve Report Highlights “Honesty Gaps” in More than Half of States’ Student Proficiency Ratings[…]
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) has released a list of 10 things you should know about the PARCC assessments as you start off this school year: PARCC is your state’s homegrown assessment. PARCC is not a testing company – it’s a group of states working together to build better Read more about Ten Things to Know About PARCC[…]
Much has been made of the discrepancies between American students and foreign students in terms of their performance on key tests of academic performance. There has also been an ongoing argument between two sides of American education policy about whether the results that show American students falling behind are a condemnation of American education or Read more about U.S. States in a Global Context: Results from the NAEP-TIMSS Linking Study[…]
FairTest, an organization that “advances quality education and equal opportunity by promoting fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial evaluations of students, teachers and schools”, has prepared a report on confirmed incidences of schools cheating on standardized tests in recent years. The report includes discussion of multiple means through which schools manipulate results of standardized tests. Read more about Standardized Exam Cheating Confirmed in 37 States and DC[…]
Matthew DiCarlo of the Albert Shanker Institute has developed five recommendations for reporters who write stories on state test scores. But these recommendations are not only useful for reporters – educators also would benefit from understanding the nuances of these numbers that are increasingly used to judge worth. 1. Look at both scale scores and Read more about Five Recommendations For Reporting On (Or Just Interpreting) State Test Scores[…]