A growing band of teachers, schools, and entire districts have put their faith in standards-based grading, an innovative, albeit complex and sometimes controversial, method that aims to make grades more meaningful. A standards-based report card contains an overall grade for each course but also indicates how well a student has mastered each of the…

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…

A national consensus has emerged around the educational expectations for all students. Rigorous standards for college and career readiness developed by state leaders have been adopted by 44 states and the District of Columbia. State leaders have formed two consortia that are designing new assessments to support these standards. This shared…

It's no surprise that, 28 years after the publication of "A Nation at Risk," school-reform efforts have generated so little effect. The nation's schools have proven, over the past century, adept at resisting change. Recent attempts to inject accountability and innovation have brought an important opportunity. No Child Left Behind helped…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) placed a new focus and accountability on the achievement levels of English learners by requiring that they develop English proficiency and meet the same academic standards that all children are expected to meet by year 2014. Administrators and teachers are looking at ways English learners might progress more…

A new report, "The Proficiency Illusion," released last year by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute states that the tests that states use to measure academic progress under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) are creating a false impression of success, especially in reading and especially in the early grades. The report is a collaboration…

There are approximately 8,600 schools in the US that had failed to make their minimal requirement of "adequate yearly progress" and were labeled under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy criteria, as "low-performing." Some of these schools were in fact doing great but had only failed in meeting the requirement of having 95% of its students take 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.…

The failure of schools to include English-language learners (ELL) in their testing programs or the low performance of this particular sub-group on state assessments are some of the major reasons why schools come to be labeled as not meeting adequate yearly progress requirements under "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). According to the…

The Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test scores for 2004 have been announced. The tests, administered to juniors, attempt to assess how well students perform in mathematics, reading, writing, science, and social studies. There is a good deal at stake here. For students, it means money: Any student who meets or exceeds the state's…

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…