Mandatory grade retention for poor-performing readers has been a disputed practice for decades. Since the early-2000s, state-level mandatory grade retention policies have proliferated. In 18 states and Washington, D.C. mandatory grade retention exists for students in the third-grade who fail an end-of-year standardized reading exam. These policies…

Background: Over the last twenty years, retention has increased in popularity with policymakers who are concerned with student achievement and aim to end social promotion (i.e., the practice of advancing a student to the next grade level although they have not yet met the academic expectations of their current grade level). Despite calls to expand…

Most studies of test-based promotion policies focus on measuring the effect of retention (being left back) on later student outcomes, and the evidence is fairly mixed. However, test-based promotion policies do not only affect the students who are retained. Presumably, they also affect students and schools as they try to improve reading performance…

California's shift towards continuous improvement in education makes understanding how districts and schools can learn to improve a more pressing question than ever. The CORE Improvement Community (CIC), a network of California school districts engaged in learning about improvement together, is an important testing ground to learn about what this…

This study examines Arizona's restrictive language policy from the perspective of English learners (ELs) and reclassified fluent English proficient students who have been enrolled in the structured English immersion (SEI) model. While multiple scholars in the USA have analyzed Arizona's policy impact since its enactment in 2008, none to date have…

This report describes how five states -- Alabama, Kentucky, Maryland, Tennessee and Texas -- made exceptional progress in student achievement during the first decade of the 21st century. State leaders in these states all realized early in the decade that they had a problem they wanted to address. They established a "plan" at the state…

Recent national and state standards of accountability have focused on increasing student performance and achievement as well as teacher quality. Included in this challenge is the issue of teacher compensation and how it has evolved with the efforts of providing quality instruction in order to improve the performance of students. Texas has…

This paper investigates the impact of the School Breakfast Program (SBP) on cognitive achievement. The SBP is a federal entitlement program that offers breakfast to any student, including free breakfast for any low-income student, who attends a school that participates in the program. To increase the availability of the SBP, many states mandate…