For the past few months, Marc Tucker, of the National Center on Education and the Economy, has written a series of blog posts in which he lays out his plans for comprehensive reforms to bring more accountability to American education. Tucker began back in February with a post entitled, “NCLB, Read more
With pilot tests being conducted and debates raging over Common Core-aligned assessments, new changes proposed for the SAT, and emerging plans for new science assessments, the landscape of educational assessments is changing rapidly. In this month’s issue brief, we have assembled summary information and links that will keep you on Read more
How are states defining and applying Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) in their teacher evaluation systems? That is the question that a new report from Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands answers. The report provides an overview of how states are using SLOs, based on a review of state education Read more
Joshua Starr, the superintendent of the Montgomery County, MD, school system in suburban Washington, is no stranger to controversy over mandated testing. This blog covered his past attempt to delay testing aligned with Common Core in order to give his district teachers more time to prepare students for the changes Read more
Who wrote the narrative, the frame through which we view the world of public education? Today the (often unstated) assumptions seem firmly in place: “America is losing the education race, test scores can be trusted, and teachers are the key to learning.” Once you accept all that, it’s logical to Read more
A new report from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder argues that the U.S. should consider adopting a European-style accountability system, where schools self-evaluate and then receive feedback from trained site visitors. The U.S. test-based accountability model holds schools and teachers accountable for student outcomes Read more
A new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality indicates that by and large, teacher evaluations are becoming more stringent. The “State of the State” report is entitled, “Connect the Dots: Using evaluations of teacher effectiveness to inform policy and practice.” The report suggests that 35 states and DC Read more
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 Read more
Statistics show that an increasing number of school districts have adopted new teacher evaluation techniques. As opposed to what many have feared, districts have almost never used student test data alone to evaluate teachers. Even if they did, the typical measure of student growth—progress on state assessments from one school Read more
Linda Darling-Hammond, John Jackson, and Marc Tucker are calling for renewed attention to assessment in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act, of which the most recent iteration is No Child Left Behind. They write: The next version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) should require Read more
Teacher evaluation systems today are more refined and useful for improving teachers’ skills and connecting teachers to student achievement than past models, a new national report that examines states’ teacher evaluation policies by the National School Boards Association‘s (NSBA) Center for Public Education (CPE) finds. “Trends in Teacher Evaluation: How Read more
As the internationally benchmarked Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are adopted in states across the country, educators are seeking ways to support an increasingly diverse student population to meet these more demanding expectations. The likelihood that students will achieve the aims of the standards will be substantially shaped by how Read more
Parker Palmer of the Center for Courage and Renewal is a well-known author and speaker in the field of education. He is worried about the current direction of education reform, which seeks to use more value-added measures to judge student, teacher, and school proficiency. Here are his thoughts: “We’re always Read more
In the continuing era of No Child Left Behind, which calls for verifiable data to be used to make decisions about schools and education policy, standardized tests have become increasingly common for most American schools. With more recent questions about how much these test scores should be used to evaluate Read more
The U.S. is in the midst of an important shift in K-12 education. Nearly all states are beginning to implement college- and career-ready content standards and are in the process of developing new aligned assessment systems to measure whether their students have the knowledge and critical skills they need to Read more
A new report, “An Ocean of Unknowns”, from Laura Bornfreund at the New America Foundation describes the challenges involved with attempting to reform teacher evaluation systems to include student data for pre-k through grade 2 students. Following are portions from the executive summary of that report: What is the best Read more