The expansion of student opportunity through the flexible spending of Education Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) builds in direct accountability to the parents who choose and hold the power of the purse. Families can select different schools and service providers if they are dissatisfied with how their student is faring. But ESAs can also be designed…

Across the country, education leaders are adding their voices to the call to address the issue of overtesting in schools. To assist districts in ensuring they have a coherent assessment strategy in place and only administer tests that are useful and of high quality, Achieve developed the "Student Assessment Inventory for School…

This report identifies the states with current or pending state-level end-of-course assessment (EOC) programs, the subjects in which EOCs are administered in the states, and the EOCs (if any) students must pass to graduate from high school. Twenty-two states currently administer one or more EOCs to all students in an EOC course. This number will…

Texas, which has helped shape key tenets of the standards and accountability movement, is on the brink of revamping the way it assesses high school students for graduation. Instead of testing knowledge that students accumulate over several years, the state would test what students learn in each course. A bill passed by the Texas Senate last month…

The relationships among factors reported on a set of report cards developed for local school districts in Tennessee were studied. The analysis offers information about how selected factors relate to student outcome. Each year, Tennessee's State Board of Education produces a report card on each school district using data provided by the district…