A growing number of states are interested in tracking the readiness of children entering kindergarten. In 2010, just seven states (Alaska, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, and Vermont) collected Kindergarten Entry Assessment (KEA) data for the purposes of aggregating data at the state level. Since this time, most states report…

Over the last decade, accountability reform has been at the forefront of the domestic policy agenda. Although the Obama Administration was critical of some elements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), its policies endorsed high-stakes testing and expanded the scope of the stakes. With the Race to the Top and an NCLB waiver process, the administration…

Act 82 of 2012 established new standards for Pennsylvania's teacher evaluation system, including the incorporation of student performance measures in ratings decisions. Since 2009, approximately 35 states have amended teacher evaluation systems, with student achievement playing an increasingly prominent role. This count includes neighboring…

Motivated by the multiple-measures clause of recent federal policy regarding student eligibility for alternate assessments based on modified academic achievement standards (AA-MASs), this study examined how scores or combinations of scores from a diverse set of assessments predicted students' end-of-year proficiency status on statewide achievement…

This dissertation investigates the prevailing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate as an effective platform to improve schools. The data compiled for use in this study represented 426 high schools in Pennsylvania and were retrieved from publicly accessible, state-sponsored sources. The statistical methodologies from the Pennsylvania Value-Added…

The intent of this study was to identify and examine the policies and practices of Pennsylvania School Boards, and identify what relationship these might have to patterns of district-level student performance. This study utilized a sequential mixed-methods approach in collecting data. First, quantitative data were secured using surveys sent to a…

Prior to the mandatory testing and reporting required by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), school improvement efforts were shown to lack coherence (Newman, Smith, Allensworth, & Bryk, 2001) and often included conflicting programs (Hatch, 2002). Part of the theory of performance-based accountability in general, and NCLB in particular, was…

This article argues for and models an approach to writing program assessment that relies on study of the writing practices of program graduates as a way to inform revisions in curriculum and teaching practices. The article also examines how conducting such assessments can help nondisciplinary publics understand the nature of composition …

Two decades of research have documented what now is common knowledge: no in-school factor matters more to students' educational experiences and outcomes than the effectiveness of their teacher. As a result, the national airspace is increasingly crowded with proposed reforms and initiatives designed to boost teacher performance, including new…

"Building Institutional Capacity for Data-Informed Decision Making" is the third installment of the Cutting Edge series, which aims to help colleges engage faculty, scale successful interventions, and create a strong culture of evidence through use of data to strengthen their institutional change and student success efforts. Though the…

In this article, the author discusses the Dubois school's important discoveries about their instructional program after taking a closer look at the year-by-year academic progress of individual students and their participation in a pilot project of the Pennsylvania education department that provides a value added assessment of student test scores.…

This year the Center on Education Policy (CEP) analyzed data on the achievement of different groups of students in two distinct ways. First, it looked at grade 4 test results to determine whether the performance of various groups improved at three achievement levels--basic and above, proficient and above, and advanced. Second, it looked at gaps…

A system for evaluating and monitoring child development projects, with possible computerization capabilities, was developed for the State of Pennsylvania in connection with 26 child development projects funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission. The Ecological Monitoring Information System (EMIS), provides a series of ecological measurement…