California is taking a bold new approach to the evaluation of school performance, the provision of data to parents and educators, and the use of accountability to improve student learning. Broadly speaking, the state is stepping away from the consequential accountability that was compelled under No Child Left Behind and toward a system that relies…

School-based prevention and promotion interventions (SBPPI) improve desirable outcomes (e.g., commitment to school and attendance) and reduce undesirable outcomes (e.g., suspensions and violence). Unfortunately, our understanding of how to effectively implement and sustain SBPPI outside of well-controlled conditions is lacking. To bridge this…

Context: In the past two years, states have implemented sweeping reforms to their teacher evaluation systems in response to Race to the Top legislation and, more recently, NCLB waivers. With these new systems, policymakers hope to make teacher evaluation both more rigorous and more grounded in specific job performance domains such as teaching…

A primary focus of recent educational policymaking has been on improving measures of teaching effectiveness, attributable in part to recent federal policies such as the Race to the Top initiative and Investing in Innovation. To date, neither researchers nor practitioners have arrived at a consensus on the best methods for evaluating special…

A statewide survey of coordinators of inclusive high school service-learning programs was conducted to validate elements, methods, and barriers to including students with and without disabilities in service-learning. Surveys were mailed to 655 service-learning coordinators; 190 (29%) returned a completed survey. Findings support the validity of…

Passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in December 2015 signaled a new era for teacher evaluation reform. Under ESSA, states and districts have greater autonomy to design and implement teacher evaluation systems independent of federal influence. This new flexibility brings with it new responsibilities and challenges for states and…

The passage of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act and the No Child Left Behind Act has highlighted the importance of all students having access to the general education curriculum. Because students with disabilities are being included in the general education classroom in greater numbers, teachers need to implement…

This research evaluated the psychometric properties of Friedman's (1999) Teacher Work-Autonomy Scale (TWA) to determine whether it was an acceptable instrument to measure U.S. teacher autonomy in the present educational context. A second purpose was to ascertain the current status of teachers' perceptions of their autonomy from a sample of U.S.…

The evidence is clear: better teachers improve student outcomes, ranging from test scores to college attendance rates to career earnings. Federal policy has begun to catch up with these findings in its recent shift from an effort to ensure that all teachers have traditional credentials to policies intended to incentivize states to evaluate and…

The use of value-added modeling (VAM) in school accountability is expanding. However, trying to decide how to embrace VAM can be rather nettlesome. Some experts claim it is "too unreliable," causes "more harm than good," and has "a big margin for error," while other experts assert VAM is "imperfect, but…

The 12th annual William H. Angoff Memorial Lecture was presented by Dr. Michael T. Kane, ETS's (Educational Testing Service) Samuel J. Messick Chair in Test Validity and the former Director of Research at the National Conference of Bar Examiners. Dr. Kane argues that it is important for policymakers to recognize the impact of errors of measurement…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were created in response to the shortcomings of No Child Left Behind era standards and assessments. Among those failings were the poor quality of content standards and assessments and the variability in content expectations and proficiency targets across states, as well as concerns related to the economic…

A survey was designed to comprehensively assess multiple aspects of school counselor job satisfaction and job-related frustration, as well as orientation with the comprehensive curriculum-based guidance program used in Arizona. The five-page survey was completed by 155 Arizona school counselors. While the majority of respondents reported high…

English language learners (ELLs) constitute one of the fastest growing subpopulations of students in the United States. It is important to determine whether the assessments used by states in determining students' proficiencies are valid and fair for ELLs. This study focused on several standards-based assessments in mathematics and science…

The adoption of Common Core State Standards has increased the need for assessments capable of measuring more performance-based outcomes. This monograph brings together the current literature and resources for the development and implementation of performance assessment. The text was written as part of a project-based graduate course and has…