The Forum Guide to Data Quality provides best practices from districts and states for maintaining quality data as these agencies regularly review and revise their methods for working with data, as well as their expectations for all staff who are responsible for education data and their quality. This resource is intended to help districts and…

Policymakers across the nation are leading efforts to ensure that every classroom has an effective teacher. Faced with the need to dramatically improve student outcomes, states have embraced a policy agenda that promotes and supports teacher quality in many ways, including developing evaluation and compensation policies, targeting professional…

Annual "Profiles" reports are comprehensive digests of data on education management organizations. Analysis and interpretation of the data in this report are, for the most part, limited to describing general trends over time. The report is intended for a broad audience. Policymakers, educators, school district officials, and school board…

This report presents survey results of the 10 State Actions including status of all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. These State Actions include: (1) Link P-20/workforce data systems; (2) Create stable, sustained support for robust state longitudinal data systems; (3) Develop governance structures to guide data collection,…

This report evaluates the degree to which current assessment practices and programs include students with disabilities. It notes the difficulty of accurately determining the participation of students with disabilities in large-scale assessment programs due to a lack of data, differing definitions of eligible testing populations, and the…

This report presents results of a study describing current state policies and practices to minimize or reduce inappropriate placements of minority students in special education. States were surveyed to obtain information about changes in their procedures for collecting data by race/ethnicity and their procedures to monitor local districts where…

This paper examines issues in gathering data for purposes of making accountability decisions for students with disabilities. The first section describes five alternative methods being used: (1) administration of norm-referenced tests; (2) focus on results or outcomes; (3) Individualized Education Program aggregation; (4) secondary analysis of…

This study explored fourth-grade teachers' understanding of mathematical problem solving, an aspect of the Vermont portfolio assessment program that has been largely ignored. Teachers' conceptions of problem solving, their knowledge of problem-solving strategies, their selection and evaluation of problem-solving tasks, and their instructional…

This document, which draws heavily on lessons learned during 11 years of the Southern Regional Education Board's High Schools That Work initiative, is intended to help state leaders review their existing system for assessing accountability in vocational education or plan such a system. The document begins with a discussion of the purpose of…