The 2015 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act placed a 1.0% cap on the participation of students with disabilities in the alternate assessment based on alternate academic achievement standards (AA-AAAS). U.S. Department of Education regulations clarified that states must develop participation guidelines and a definition of…

In 2019, the Center for American Progress (CAP) embarked on a series of community conversations with caregivers, educators, school administrators, and other school stakeholders to learn what information they value and want to know about schools and student learning. This issue brief highlights what CAP gleaned from one round of community…

One of the biggest challenges that states and local intermediaries face in setting up and scaling high-quality youth apprenticeships is gathering relevant, accurate and actionable data. High-quality data is an essential ingredient for a strong youth apprenticeship program because it equips state and local leaders to evaluate impact, monitor…

The purpose of this commentary is to push the boundaries (real and perceived) of how we think about teacher accountability, education and the purpose of schooling in contemporary times. It takes as a starting point a view that recent changes to the Every Student Succeeds Act does little to shift the underpinning logics of high-stakes teacher…

Measures of student growth offer a richer understanding of student performance than a moment-in-time test score alone, but measures of student growth are not created equal. In their accountability plans for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), some states are using a sophisticated analysis of multiple data points that evaluate the…