In the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Congress called for the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to conduct a rigorous study of the conditions and practices under which educational technology is effective in increasing student academic achievement. A 2007 report presenting study findings for the 2004-2005 school year, indicated that, after one…

This general achievement trends profile includes information that the Center on Education Policy (CEP) and the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) obtained from states from fall 2008 through April 2009. Included herein are: (1) Bullet points summarizing key findings about achievement trends in that state at three performance…

Throughout the 1980s and early '90s, school leaders in Waterloo faced a gloomy horizon. Economic hardships, including declines in property values and rising unemployment, resulted in decreasing school enrollment and limited financial resources. By 1995, the district had accumulated several million dollars of debt. From 1995 to 2005, the student…

Tests of academic progress such as those enforced by No Child Left Behind Act are the only practical way to hold schools accountable for educating all children and are therefore essential to the twin aims of quality and fairness. Many of the complaints against the No Child Left Behind law pertain to the supposedly harmful influence of intensive…

The Language Vocabulary Acquisition (LVA) Approach is a revolutionary method of reading instruction for emergent and developing readers. It is an intense reading program with high levels of student participation, engagement, and interaction with print text, that yields high outcomes in phonological awareness, reading and writing fluency, and…

The Annual Condition of Education Report provides a wide range of state-level data, including shifts in student populations and demographics, teacher salaries and characteristics, student achievement results, and school financial information. The report provides important metrics to the education community about the status of the education system.…

President Bush says that the No Child Left Behind Act is working, pointing to student-achievement results from a single subsection of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and tentative Reading First data. But the evidence available to support his claim is questionable. The data Mr. Bush cited are from just the "long-term…

This paper provides school personnel with a practical outline for selecting an appropriate standardized achievement battery by describing the test selection procedures developed by a large metropolitan school system. The system needed a new achievement test battery which would reflect recent curriculum changes and provide for grade level testing.…

This paper profiles the student subgroup achievement and gap trends in Iowa for 2010. In grade 8 (the only grade in which subgroup trends were analyzed by achievement level), Iowa had data for racial/ethnic subgroups, low income students, and boys and girls at the proficient and advanced levels. Trends at the proficient and advanced levels were…

Old Order Amish are readily distinguishable from others in society by their dissociation from "modern" convenience and dress. Students in an Old Order Amish school in Iowa receive instruction in language arts from a secular basal language arts workbook, and a basal reader containing biblical stories. Comprehension of content is evaluated…

This general achievement trends profile includes information that the Center on Education Policy (CEP) and the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) obtained from states from fall 2008 through April 2009. Included herein are: (1) Bullet points summarizing key findings about achievement trends in that state at three performance…

In 1996, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) began implementing a new school accountability policy designed to improve student performance by providing a combination of consequences and support to low-performing schools. The center point of the accountability system, the Chicago school probation policy, designates schools as being on probation if…

Sustaining improvement and building capacity for ongoing learning is a key challenge for schools, particularly high-performing schools facing increasing pressures from the No Child Left Behind Act. This paper presents a discussion on how goal setting with students increases the academic student achievement in Burleigh Elementary School. Teachers…

The preparation and use of an objective strength analysis report (OSAR) from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) are described. The OSAR was designed to answer two needs: (1) a format which allows the school to easily answer the question "which reading objectives need more emphasis and/or better materials or techniques in order to raise its…

The purpose of the fifth annual Dearborn Achievement Test Score report is to summarize and to help interpret the test results so that Dearborn citizens and educators will have a better understanding of the educational achievements of Dearborn students. The District-wide Testing Program assesses reading readiness, scholastic aptitude, academic…