This report by the Center on Education Policy (CEP), an independent nonprofit organization, examines trends in the achievement of high school students on the state reading/English language arts (ELA) and mathematics tests used for accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This study confirms that there is reason for concern about…

Forty-seven states have adopted a pathway to teaching, alternative to the standard state certification otherwise required. But is alternative certification impairing student learning? That is ultimately the justification for traditional teacher certification. To see which states have established genuine alternative certification programs and which…

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.…

The Southeast Center for Teaching Quality and Georgia State University sent research teams into six southeastern and southern states to find out if the increased accountability policies are having positive or negative effects at the classroom level. The teams found strong support for standards-based reform and for state accountability systems.…

Under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, every school is subject to the controversial mandates for annual test score gains contained in the federal law. The law represents a profound change in the relationship between the federal government and state and local education agencies regarding who controls education and has direct implications for…

In the 20 years since the federal report on education "A Nation at Risk" appeared, much has been written on test scores of students in the United States versus their counterparts elsewhere. One of the issues is whether their scores are in fact inferior, or merely a statistical difference due to their universal schooling philosophy. Since…

Thirty years ago, at the close of the tumultuous 1960s, futurist Alvin Toffler wrote a bestseller, "Future Shock," which warned of the effects of accelerating change, or what Toffler described as "the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future." In the section of the book which was on education,…

For the past four years, the Center on Education Policy (CEP), an independent nonprofit research and advocacy organization, has been conducting a comprehensive and continuous review of NCLB, producing the annual reports contained in the series "From the Capital to the Classroom" as well as numerous papers on specific issues related to…