When President Obama took office in 2009, his administration quickly seized on teacher evaluations as an important public-policy problem. Today, much of his legacy on K-12 education rests on efforts to revamp evaluations in the hopes of improving teaching across the country, which his administration pursued via a series of incentives for states.…

In this article, Angela Hurley ponders a question centered on how well P-12 schooling experiences and the current accompanying education discourse on the importance of attending college actually match with traditional notions of the purposes of academic life held by college faculty. Does the current, performance data-driven system of P-12…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaced the No Child Left Behind Act with great fanfare and enthusiasm. Granting more power to states and curbing what was seen as federal overreach was well received. However, the new legislation maintains a predominately test-based accountability system with a federal mandate for interventions in well over…

The Academic Performance Index (API) is the centerpiece of California's state assessment and accountability system. With the recent passage of SB1458 and the pending reauthorization of both state and federal accountability legislation, there is now an unprecedented opportunity to improve the API for next generation accountability in California. In…

The United States education system depends on legislation and funding at the federal, state and local levels. Public understanding of assessment therefore is important to educational reform in the USA. Educational reformers often invoke assessment information as a reason for reform, typically by citing unacceptable achievement on some measure or…

Federal education policy will soon undergo a major revision, with significant consequences for the state's own policy and practices. This report seeks to help federal and state policymakers consider this restructuring and one of its core questions: How should schools and school districts be held accountable for the academic progress of their…

The upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides an opportunity to reconsider what factors school performance-reporting systems should include. Critics of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have pointed to the narrowing effects of the law's focus on mathematics and reading achievement, and they have called for efforts…

High-stakes testing plays a critical role in education today in the United States. Every state uses a high-stakes test to comply with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate. While many believe high-stakes testing is an acceptable and accurate way to measure students' learning, one has to ask whether high stakes testing is an effective measurement…

The No Child Left Behind Act requires states to publish high school graduation rates for public schools; the U.S. Department of Education is currently considering a mandate to standardize high school graduation rate reporting. However, no consensus exists among researchers or policymakers about how to measure high school graduation rates. We use…

The enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has pushed to the forefront the ever-present need to conduct high quality research and translate our research findings to practice by emphasizing evidence-based practices for schools and related settings. Currently, much of the discussion surrounding evidence-based practices has focused on defining…