The Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey (TEACHNJ) Act was adopted by the New Jersey legislature in August 2012 with the intent to raise student achievement by improving the overall quality of instruction. As a result of this act, new teacher evaluation systems, known as ACHIEVE NJ, have been introduced in school…

There has been perennial interest in personal qualities other than cognitive ability that determine success, including self-control, grit, growth mind-set, and many others. Attempts to measure such qualities for the purposes of educational policy and practice, however, are more recent. In this article, we identify serious challenges to doing so.…

Most district and school leaders understand that recruiting group members who have differing backgrounds, perspectives, talents, and personalities makes for good decision-making. Unfortunately, simply assembling a variety of top-notch individuals does not necessarily mean their talents and perspectives will be fully considered. Beth Strathman…

The first charter school law surfaced in Minnesota in 1991, and since then, 42 additional states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have passed laws governing charter schools. Yet still today, the details within those state laws vary significantly, and seven states do not have a law at all. Legislation permitting charter schools was…

In conjunction with the White House Next Gen High School Summit on November 10, a new report finds that the number of high school dropouts decreased from 1 million in 2008 to approximately 750,000 in 2012. The report, released by the Alliance for Excellent Education, America's Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises, and Everyone Graduates Center,…

The Issue: Washington is taking a close look at Title II, Part A (Title IIA) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as Congress debates reauthorization. The program sends roughly $2.5 billion a year to all states and nearly all districts to "(1) increase student academic achievement through strategies such as improving teacher…

Colleges and universities have suffered and endured a plethora of criticisms over not properly preparing principals to lead the schools of the 21st century. This powerful statement prompted the authors to ask two very important questions. The first question is, what does one mean by "properly preparing?" The second question is, what…

The rapidly compounding demands placed on school principals for increased student achievement in conjunction with greater levels of accountability have added countless responsibilities to the already interminable job descriptions of school leaders. Therefore, principals are finding the need to assign leadership tasks to their teachers in an…

Using a learning design perspective on No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I examine how accountability policy shaped urban educators' instructional sensemaking. Focusing on the role of policy-rooted classifications, I examine conversations from a middle school mathematics teacher team as a "best case" because they worked diligently to comply…

Central to improving the quality of education is developing a teacher evaluation system that promotes teachers' professional growth, the improvement of student learning, and educational equality for all students regardless of social factors such as socio-economic status, educational environment, race, and gender. To address these issues in South…

Louisiana has received recent attention for some of its new education policies and promising early results. In this report, RAND researchers provide an in-depth description of Louisiana's approach to improving student outcomes since 2012. The authors examine how the state has used various policy levers -- including mandates, resource alignment,…

In the summer of 2013, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) issued public, highly-visible ratings of teacher education programs as part of their ambitious and controversial Teacher Prep Review. We provide the first empirical examination of NCTQ ratings, beginning with a descriptive overview of the ratings and documentation of how they…

Since 2005, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has published annual analyses of Ohio's state report card data, focusing on district and charter schools in Ohio's Big Eight urban areas: Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown. For the 2017--18 school year, we provide an overview of Ohio's assessment and report…

The Public School Forum of North Carolina is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on improving educational outcomes for all North Carolina children. As they do each year, they have released a list of the "Top 10 Education Issues" they believe will be the top issues for the year, as well as issues they believe should be on the…

Teacher assessment literacy has become a central priority across many educational systems in North America and elsewhere in response to growing accountability demands. Although many scholars have aimed to measure teacher assessment literacy, recent research has identified that current assessment literacy instruments do not fully reflect current…