This capsule is meant to address the most frequently asked questions about the academic performance of Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) during the 2022-2023 school year. M-DCPS received a District Performance Grade of "A" this academic year, and no traditional MDCPS school received a grade of "F". However, the…

This report examines the implementation of Summer 305, an enhanced summer program that operated from June 14 through August 5 during the summer of 2022 at 113 sites in Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS). Twenty program offerings were provided to accelerate learning recovery, develop foundational skills, and address social and emotional…

Despite the familiar American scene of lined-up students being ushered out of school buildings while their classmates lay wounded or dead inside, and despite repeated calls for restrictions on the guns used in such shootings, nearly twenty years after Columbine, the gun lobby retains a powerful grip on the nation's politicians - using money and…

A decade ago, states across the nation adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in an effort to raise the academic bar for their students. This has provoked countless political battles since then--including an especially intense one in Florida. That fight culminated in Governor Ron DeSantis vowing to eliminate and replace the Common Core,…

The Extended Foreign Language (EFL) program is a "school within a school" dual language program in which students are instructed in both English and a language other than English (Spanish or French) with one hour of daily instruction in that language. Most of the schools participating in the program implement the English/Spanish version…

For several years, WestEd's Measure to Learn and Improve (MLI) project team has kept California state policy leaders informed about the statewide implementation of the California Academic Standards in English language arts and mathematics, by summarizing and disseminating results from the RAND Corporation's annual American Educator Panel (AEP)…

"LANGUAGE!"[R] is a language arts intervention designed for struggling learners in grades 3-12 who score below the 40th percentile on standardized literacy tests. The curriculum integrates English literacy acquisition skills into a six-step lesson format. During a daily lesson, students work on six key literacy strands (which the…

This paper examines whether teachers in schools serving students from high-poverty backgrounds are as effective as teachers in schools with more advantaged students. The question is important. Teachers are recognized as the most important school factor affecting student achievement, and the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their…

The United States is becoming less globally competitive as other nations move aggressively to educate their populations. To lead the world once again in educational attainment--President Obama's goal by 2020--more Americans will need to enter college. But the biggest challenge isn't college going; it is college completion. Around the country,…

This paper examines evidence on the "systemic effects" of expanding school choice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee is home to one of the nation's largest and longest-running school choice programs. If there are systemic effects from expanding school choice we should be able to see them in Milwaukee. This paper also introduces a novel…

Literature on current methods of teaching language in bilingual education is reviewed and a new approach is suggested. It is suggested that a specialized sequence of native language courses should be offered to populations of language minority students with the same vernacular language. The approach proposed integrates bilingual education, English…

Seven teachers, part of an Arts Integration Community of Practice, used rubrics to measure student learning and artistic skills. Examples from five sites, across a variety of academic content areas and age levels, and with students of varying disabilities, are included in this article. Results suggest that rubrics may be a useful tool for…

This document contains sample test items from the Florida College-Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST), an achievement test that measures communication and computation skills that students should have acquired on completing their sophomore year in college. The sample items in this document test the set of skills that were revised in September 1990…

This study examines the relationships between student literacy performance and discussion-based approaches to the development of understanding in 64 middle and high school English classrooms. A series of hierarchical linear models indicated that discussion-based approaches were significantly related to spring performance, controlling for fall…