Defining and measuring success are not merely process steps, but critical conversations that shape how education is understood and delivered. They influence how individuals within and outside the system perceive the goals of education. They shape the incentives for stakeholders seeking to improve educational outcomes. Methods of measuring success…

While many students who start at a community college intend to transfer and complete a bachelor's degree, most of them are not successful. One of the impediments to improving outcomes for these students has been the lack of widely available measures of institutional effectiveness in serving transfer students. In the publication "Tracking…

This report describes an initiative undertaken from 2016-2017 by the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution and Education International (EI) to develop tools to measure the breadth of learning opportunities to which children and youth are exposed in an education system. The Breadth of Learning Opportunities (BOLO)…

Traditionally, evaluation has primarily tried to answer the question "Does a program, service, or policy work?" Recently, more attention is given to questions about variation in program effects and the mechanisms through which program effects occur. Addressing these kinds of questions requires moving beyond assessing average program…

This paper provides Part C and Part B state staff an opportunity to learn about considerations that could support changing their State-Identified Measurable Result (SIMR) baselines or targets. States are required to focus on a particular SIMR. The SIMR must be a child, youth, or family outcome and cannot be a process outcome. The SIMR might be,…

Sustainable Development Goals call on Members States to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all" and sets a number of targets related to technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In order to collect input from the global TVET community, UNESCO-UNEVOC organized a…

In "Using Learning Progressions to Design Vertical Scales that Support Coherent Inferences about Student Growth" (hereafter ULR), Briggs and Peck suggest that learning progressions could be used as the basis of vertical scales with naturally benchmarked descriptions of student proficiency. They propose and provide a single example of a…

This year's Action Guide examines the need for new ways of measuring student success. Academic test scores are just one method of measuring student progress, offering an incomplete picture of student learning and growth. Educators and state leaders recognize that serving all students well requires focusing on their individual needs, including…

This tool and its supporting resources are intended to help education leaders understand and assess equitable access data to support a root-cause analysis and, ultimately, draft a State Plan to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators. The activities in this tool introduce metrics, address staff capacity for analyzing equitable access data,…

This article discusses the principles-based approach that emphasizes a "why" question by using the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) "Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting" to question and understand the basis for specific differences between IFRS and U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (U.S.…

The APPA Facilities Performance Indicators (FPI) is perhaps one of the most powerful analytical tools that institutional facilities professionals have at their disposal. It is a diagnostic facilities performance management tool that addresses the essential questions that facilities executives must answer to effectively perform their roles. It…

Over the past several years, public higher education, both in the U.S. and internationally, has increasingly been required to explain, defend, and validate its performance and value to a wide variety of constituents, including governors, legislators, students, parents, employers, and taxpayers. In addition, in 2006, then U.S. Secretary of…

Public school critics often point to rising expenditures and relatively flat test scores to justify their school reform agendas. The claims are flawed because their analyses fail to account for the difference in data types between dollars (ratio) and test scores (interval). A cost-benefit analysis using dollars as a common metric for both costs…

Evaluation occurs within a specific context and is influenced by the economic, political, historical, and social forces that shape that context. The culture of evaluation is thus very much embedded in the culture of accountability that currently prevails in public sector institutions, policies, and program. As such, our understanding of the…

This article is a commentary of a paper by Derek C. Briggs and Frederick A. Peck, "Using Learning Progressions to Design Vertical Scales That Support Coherent Inferences about Student Growth," which describes an elegant potential framework for at least beginning to address three priorities in large-scale assessment that have not been…