Public accountability through information disclosure is a pillar of modern education reform efforts. Despite the ubiquity of this approach, we argue that public accountability in education is undertheorized and often predictably unlikely to achieve its intended policy goals. Drawing on examples from an equity-oriented court case in California and…

The environment of U.S. schools has changed dramatically over a quarter century as standards tied to test-based accountability and market competition became commonplace. We examine the issues that school systems face in this changing environment, to identify considerations for researchers interested in reform as educational system building. We…

Recent studies on value added research indicates that, by using data from student perceptions, classroom observations, and test score growth, one can obtain credible evidence of the relative effectiveness of a set of teachers who teach similar children under similar conditions. Recent careful research on school effects indicates that committed…

Using five AERA presidential addresses over the past half century as landmarks, this essay traces the evolution of research on teaching and teacher education as well as some critical impacts the research has had on policy and practice related to teacher education and teacher evaluation in the United States. The discussion shows how these addresses…

Both the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and recent efforts to hold schools and teachers accountable have been hotly debated among practitioners, policymakers, and the public at large. Much of the debate centers on the merits and demerits of these initiatives and the general approach they represent to reforming teaching and learning. In this…

This article investigates the persistent and change elements of educational testing and assessment from 1920 to the present day. I show by examining the addresses and texts of American Educational Research Association presidents a continuing focus on schools, from early experiments and development up through applications in accountability systems.…

This article analyzes how the Obama administration used executive power to grant waivers from federal education policies and assesses whether they used this power differently than previous administrations and in other sectors (e.g., health or welfare). The executive use of waivers to shape state policy is not a new trend. However, we find that…

We examine the distinction between teaching and teachers as it relates to instructional improvement. Drawing from work outside of education on improvement systems and from analyzing the Japanese system of lesson study, we contend that a focus on teaching can shape a coordinated system for improvement whereas a focus on teachers, common in the…

This article reviews the impacts of the civil rights policies framed in the 1960s and the anti-civil rights political and legal movements that reversed them. It documents rising segregation by race and poverty. The policy reversals and transformation of U.S. demography require a new civil rights strategy. Vast immigrations, the sinking White…

Explicit versions of positivism were cast off some time ago in philosophy, but a tacit form continues to thrive in education research, exemplified by the "new scientific orthodoxy" codified in the National Research Council's "Scientific Research in Education" (2002) and reinforced in the American Educational Research Association's "Standards for…

The authors argue that part of the difficulty in studying the teaching of reading in elementary classrooms is determining where "the action" occurs in reading instruction. Based on their 5-year longitudinal study of fourth- and fifth-grade teachers in moderate- and high-poverty elementary schools, they describe three challenges: (a) determining…

The federal accountability system, made universal through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, is a system driven by quotas and sanctions, stipulating the progression of underperforming schools through sanctions based on meeting performance quotas for specific demographic groups. The authors examine whether the current federal accountability…

Since the "Tinker" decision, the Supreme Court has maintained that student First Amendment rights are modified by the "special characteristics of the school environment." The nature of these characteristics, however, has not been adequately investigated. The author proposes seven characteristics of schools that are relevant to…

Traditionally, state accountability systems have measured school-level achievement gains using cross-sectional data, for example, by comparing scores of one year's eighth graders to scores of the next year's eighth graders. This approach produces extremely volatile estimates of value added from year to year. This volatility suggests that the…

The gap between Blacks and Whites in educational outcomes has narrowed dramatically over the past 60 years, but progress stopped around 1990. The author reviews research suggesting that increasing the quantity and quality of schooling can play a powerful role in overcoming racial inequality. To achieve that goal, he reasons, our knowledge of best…