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…

Every 2 years, Education requires nearly all school districts to report incidents of restraint and seclusion. Generally, restraint is restricting a student's ability to move, and seclusion is confining them alone in a space they cannot leave. The House Committee on Appropriations' explanatory statement accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations…

Properly defining a population ensures that resources, such as funding and access, meet the needs, expectations, and intended outcomes for those represented. Ethical concerns arise when a target population, such as the English Language Learner population, is defined in numerous yet incomplete ways, and differently in research and in state policies…

Current definitions of STEM skills are inconsistent and not specific enough to inform education and skill policies and initiatives, potentially leading to a number of unsubstantiated and uncoordinated responses. There is a danger of generating a domestic oversupply of graduates in science, mathematics, engineering and technology while ignoring the…

In 2013, the national high school graduation rate hit a record high of 81.4 percent, and for the third year in a row, the nation remained on pace to meet the 90 percent goal by the Class of 2020. This sixth annual update on America's high school dropout challenge shows that these gains have been made possible by raising graduation rates for…

The 2012 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 48th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…

The 2011 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 47th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…

Federal education policy in recent years has encouraged state and local education agencies to embrace data use and analysis in decision-making, ranging from policy development and implementation to performance evaluation. The capacity of these agencies to make effective and methodologically sound use of collected data for these purposes remains an…

Various simple ex post wealth neutrality measures capture different aspects of the concept; the use of one measure alone or several measures independently can lead to interpretation problems. The Adjusted Relationship Measure is introduced to pay attention to actual revenue differences associated with wealth differences. (Author/BW)

This study examines the magnitude of the difference between estimates from the 1990-91 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) using a Common Core of Data (CCD) definition of a school and a Quality Education Data (QED) definition of a school. The 1990-91 SASS sample design allows for the development of school and administrator estimates using either…

In order to collect a thesaurus of gifted descriptors and to develop variables and item clusters appropriate for use in impact research, 847 people (404 elementary and 242 secondary school students identified as gifted, 91 elementary and 62 secondary teachers of the gifted, and 73 parents of gifted children) were interviewed. The three major…

This handbook is a major effort to establish current and consistent terms, definitions, and classification codes to maintain, collect, report, and exchange comparable information about students. The selection of terms represents the best combined judgment of many individuals as to what data might be most useful for decision making about…

This handbook is an effort to establish current and consistent terms, definitions, and classification codes to maintain, collect, report, and exchange comparable information about staff. This effort was coordinated by the Council of Chief State School Officers under contract to the National Center for Education Statistics. It represents the best…

Some issues in defining dropouts and reporting information about them are explored, with reference to the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey of the National Center for Education Statistics. There has not been any uniform national count of how many students leave school, and no commonly accepted definition has been developed that allows a number to…

A data-management system adhering to seven principles (concerned with defining and measuring characteristics and their interrelationships) is feasible and exists in parts, if not as an integrated whole. Present data-collection and reportage systems lack the real-time, analytic longitudinal characteristics that contemporary technology promises and…