The PreACT® suite of assessments (PreACT® 8/9, PreACT®, and PreACT® Secure™) can be used to monitor students' progress toward college and career readiness. Scores are classified into one of three readiness levels based on chances of meeting the ACT College Readiness Benchmark. This data byte presents the updated score ranges for each readiness…

In this new Policy Note, Professor Iain Martin, Vice Chancellor at Anglia Ruskin University, looks at each university's success in widening participation and ensuring access to people from all backgrounds. Professor Martin proposes a new measure of equity in participation, which demonstrates graphically the most equal -- and most unequal -- higher…

In 2013, staff at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Centre for Global Education Monitoring (GEM) identified the need to build measurement tools to monitor learning growth that could be used across different year levels and in different national contexts. One of those projects, under ACER's Monitoring Trends in Educational…

This publication explores how state accountability systems currently address college readiness and academic and technical career readiness and offers recommendations and examples of policies and practices that incentivize and reward districts and schools for preparing more students to earn credentials and degrees in high-demand career fields.

Student achievement growth data are increasingly used for assessing teacher effectiveness and tracking student achievement in the classroom. Guided by the student learning objective (SLO) framework, music teachers are now responsible for collecting, tracking, and reporting student growth data. Often, the reported data do not accurately reflect the…

English learners (ELs) are among the fastest-growing populations of students in our nation's public schools. This diverse subgroup of approximately 4.5 million students brings important cultural and linguistic assets to the public education system, but also faces a greater likelihood of lower graduation rates, academic achievement, and college…

There are two approaches for providing Tier 2 interventions within Response to Intervention (RtI): standard treatment protocol (STP) and the problem-solving approach (PSA). This article describes the multi-tiered RtI prevention model being implemented across the United States through an analysis of these two approaches in reading instruction. It…

Progress monitoring assessment is one of the four essential components of Response to Intervention (RTI), as defined by the National Center on Response to Intervention (NCRTI). Progress data allow teachers to evaluate the academic performance of students over time, quantify rates of improvement or responsiveness to instruction, and evaluate…

Concerned in particular about the misconceptions regarding literacy teacher preparation and recognizing the importance of educating teachers entering the profession, the International Literacy Association (ILA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) brought together a task force charged to review and analyze the research on teacher…

This technical assistance paper provides guidance to individuals with test administration responsibilities in adult education programs. These policies apply to the approved assessments that programs may use to report educational gains in compliance with the National Reporting System (NRS) requirements. The NRS is the accountability system for the…

Increasing attention to "Implementation Research" and the "Implementation Problem" has given rise to confusion about matters such as the role of "empirically-supported practices," "fidelity of implementation," and "monitoring fidelity of implementation." To clarify the matters, we approach these topics from the broad perspective of efforts to…

Having a well-qualified, effective teacher in every classroom is a cornerstone of current educational reforms. Clearly, retaining these effective teachers is critical to achieving this goal. This brief presents a strategic accountability approach to managing teacher talent retention and turnover. The brief begins with an overview of a strategic…

The Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates that all children who are eligible for special education services receive an individualized education program (IEP). Adapted physical education (APE) professionals who teach physical education to children with disabilities are challenged with how to best collect and monitor student…

The "2019 Nebraska Higher Education Progress Report" is the fourteenth annual report designed to provide the Nebraska Legislature with comparative statistics to monitor and evaluate progress toward achieving three major goals for Nebraska's postsecondary education system: (1) Increase the number of students who enter postsecondary…

This "Practitioner's Guide to Growth Models," commissioned by the Technical Issues in Large-Scale Assessment (TILSA) and Accountability Systems & Reporting (ASR), collaboratives of the "Council of Chief State School Officers," describes different ways to calculate student academic growth and to make judgments about the…