This conceptual article examines how consultants use a mundane policy device, the powerpoint presentation, to manage education policy relations between international lenders and education ministries in the global South. The article theorizes presentations as socio-material assemblages that combine consultants, software, visualization conventions,…

Choices made on data visualizations guide how users make meaning of the information presented. This research investigates design decisions made on 115 state-level dashboards reporting school safety data. Using pre-determined codes drawn from a framework of visualization rhetoric, dashboard characteristics were described and analyzed. Analysis…

In this summary article, six recommendations for the design, implementation, and interpretation of educational evaluations are presented and discussed. These recommendations are based on common "threads" that run through most, if not all, of the papers included in this special issue. The recommendations concern (1) the need for awareness…

The authors of the study "The Long-Term Impact of Teachers" claim that their study shows that increases in teacher value-added lead to significant and lasting increases in test scores and significant increases in income that will last throughout adulthood. Instead, I show that these claims are false because they are contradicted by the…

Students who take classes in education departments at universities receive significantly higher grades than students who take classes in other academic departments. The higher grades awarded by education departments cannot be explained by differences in student quality or by structural differences across departments (i.e., differences in class…

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in understanding the levels and trends in high school graduation in the U.S. A big and influential literature has argued that the "true" high school graduation rate remains at an unsatisfactory level, and that the graduation rates for minorities (Blacks and Hispanics) are alarmingly low. In this…

In this article we examine the current status of affirmative action in postsecondary admissions through a concurrent review of recent court rulings, state legislation, and higher education enrollment data. Analyzing each of these factors in the context of the others is important because the court decisions and state-level legislation interact to…

This editorial reviews recent studies of accountability policies using National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data and compares the use of aggregate NAEP data to the availability of individual-level data from NAEP. While the individual-level NAEP data sets are restricted-access and do not give accurate point-estimates of achievement,…

Using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) state assessment and a survey of state-level technology policies, this study examined digital equity in education as a multilevel organizational phenomenon with data from 70,382 students in 3,479 schools and 40 states. Students in rural schools or schools with higher…