Decades of federal and state education legislation enacted to increase student academic achievement and enhance school quality have pronounced impacts on teachers and their instructional practice. That impact is captured in the term intensification. Intensification is multifaceted and manifests as additional tasks accomplished simultaneously, with…

The Southeast Comprehensive Center (SECC) at American Institutes for Research (AIR) publishes this biannual update of college- and career-readiness standards and assessment (CCRS-A) resources. This list of resources is designed to assist staff in state education agencies (SEAs) and other educators in their curricula, instruction, standards, and…

For decades, the American elementary and secondary education system has operated somewhat as the railroads did before Lincoln's day, with each state setting its own expectations for what students should know and be able to do. To address that problem, nearly every state, with little fanfare, has adopted the Common Core State Standards for student…

There is widespread agreement on the goal of preparing every high school student for both postsecondary education and a lifetime of fulfilling work, that every graduate should be "college and career ready." The authors' view is that career readiness and college readiness entail many of the same skills, bodies of knowledge, and…

One of the most enduring and contentious debates in education circles concerns the best way to hold schools and districts accountable for improving outcomes for students and closing achievement gaps. Lawmakers, teachers, district administrators, parents, and other stakeholders--all with strong and differing opinions--have wrestled for decades with…

Recent years have seen the convergence of two major policy streams in U.S. K-12 education: standards/accountability and teacher quality reforms. Work in these areas has led to the creation of multiple measures of teacher quality, including measures of their instructional alignment to standards/assessments, observational and student survey measures…

Test score validity takes center stage in the debate over the use of high school exit exams. Scant literature addresses the amount of conditional standard error of measurement (CSEM) present in individual student results on high school exit exams. The purpose of this study is to fill a void in the literature and add a national review of the CSEM,…

Recent educational reforms have promoted accountability systems which attempt to identify "teacher effects" on student outcomes and hold teachers accountable for producing learning gains. But in the complex world of classrooms, it may be difficult to attribute "success" or "failure" to teachers. In this timely…

This study investigated the inclusion of English language learners (ELLs) in state standards and assessments, as measured by comments made by peer reviewers in the federal evaluation of states' standards and assessments. As required by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), reauthorized in 2004 as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), states…

"Perspective" is a monthly e-newsletter presenting news and views from Achieve. This month's issue commences with a report stating how over the past five years, since the National Governors Association (NGA) and Achieve co-sponsored the National Education Summit on High Schools, states have made impressive progress in aligning their high…

There are many controversies related to the increasingly widespread theme of "social justice" in teacher education, including debates about whether and/or how promoting pupils' learning is part of this theme. This article briefly discusses the concept of teacher education for social justice in terms of pupils' learning and then considers…

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001(NCLB), signed by President George W. Bush was supported overwhelming by both political parties and signified a major overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The introduction of NCLB led to a series of accountability measures in English Language Arts and mathematics in grades 6-8 beginning in…

This study contributes to the field by identifying a broad range of traditional and newer middle grade policies and practices, and determining in California which of these differentiate higher- from lower-performing schools serving similar student populations, with performance measured by the state's standards-based tests. Based on a sample of 303…

In the 2008-09 school year researchers from EdSource and Stanford University conducted a large-scale study of 303 middle grades schools in California. The team surveyed 303 principals, 3,752 English Language Arts (ELA) and math teachers in grades 6-8, and 157 superintendents of the districts and charter management organizations that oversee the…

This interim report, the first of three requested by Congress from NIE, is in response to Congress' instructions to NIE via the 1974 ESEA amendments to (1) conduct a study of compensatory education programs which would examine the fundamental purposes and effectiveness of the programs, (2) analyze ways of identifying children in greatest need of…