Results from new state tests in Kentucky--the first in the nation explicitly tied to the Common Core State Standards--show that the share of students scoring "proficient" or better in reading and math dropped by roughly a third or more in both elementary and middle school the first year the tests were given. Kentucky in 2010 was the…

Little more than half of college freshmen will get a degree, but initiatives are emerging to boost college completion. The gap between access and completion has put a new focus on ramping up retention--the percentage of freshmen who return to the same institution for a second year of college. And that's a task, observers say, for precollegiate…

Stubbornly high college remediation rates have revealed a painful equation: High school completion does not equal college readiness. That disconnection has prompted national leaders to focus like never before on figuring out how to ensure that high school graduates are truly ready to succeed in college. In that quest, a California program is often…

Despite a pending policy change aimed at including more students with disabilities and English-language learners (ELLs) in the "nation's report card," the federal agency that administers the national testing program appears to be softening the penalty for states that fail to improve inclusion rates. The disagreement underscores the…

Following a push to make "the nation's report card" better reflect the academic performance of all children in America's schools, most states boosted the numbers of students with disabilities and English-language learners who participated in the 2011 reading and math tests that are part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).…

Texas, which has helped shape key tenets of the standards and accountability movement, is on the brink of revamping the way it assesses high school students for graduation. Instead of testing knowledge that students accumulate over several years, the state would test what students learn in each course. A bill passed by the Texas Senate last month…

Nearly four years after a front-page story in "The New York Times" sparked a fierce debate by suggesting that charter school students nationally were lagging academically behind their peers in regular public schools, the national testing program that informed the controversy has generated far more data for researchers and advocates to scrutinize.…

This article reports that the new class of governors and state legislators to be elected November 4 will inherit financial problems that pose both immediate and long-term threats to existing education programs, while constraining their ability to mount new initiatives. The prospect of a deepening economic slowdown--with state-level budget deficits…

At a time when many states are ratcheting up their high school graduation requirements, critics say Louisiana's new "career diploma" appears to represent a lowering of standards and expectations for students who are not headed to a four-year college. But some state education leaders who had misgivings with the legislative effort this…

This article features FAST-R, or Formative Assessments of Student Thinking in Reading, a new assessment tool that measures critical-reading skills. FAST-R was developed by the the nonprofit Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE), a local education foundation, to provide teachers with information about what students are thinking when they try to find…

This article reports that national tests in several core subjects could be eliminated or scaled back over the next five years without more federal funding. The officials who set policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) say scheduled exams in economics, foreign language, geography, and world history could be canceled if…

This article reports on reactions to the U.S. Department of Education's first time decision to sit out an international study designed to show how advanced high school students around the world measure up in math and science. Mark S. Schneider, the commissioner of the department's National Center for Education Statistics, which normally takes the…

Twenty-three states are expanding their testing programs to additional grades this school year to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act. In devising the new tests, most states have defied predictions and chosen to go beyond multiple-choice items, by including questions that ask students to construct their own responses. But many state…

This article reports on the action taken by Texas officials to maintain the integrity of their testing program. Responding to a potential cheating scandal uncovered by a recent newspaper investigation, Texas officials announced a sweeping review of test security and plans for a new monitoring scheme for the state accountability system, which has…

Participation in the GED testing program plunged by nearly 44 percent during the most recent recorded year, a drop-off that the exam's sponsor attributes to an earlier rush by teenagers and adults to secure high school diplomas through the test before its minimum passing scores were raised. The overall number of teenagers and adults who took the…