This interim progress report provides a look at Turnaround Arts schools in their first year, including: (1) a summary of the evaluation design and research questions; (2) a preliminary description of strategies used to introduce the arts in Turnaround Arts schools; and (3) a summary of school reform indicators and student achievement data at…

This report addresses the reporting requirements of Public Law 26-26 and the provisions of "No Child Left Behind" ("NCLB") as described in the Guam Department of Education Board adopted "District Action Plan" ("DAP"). Public Law 26-26, Section 3106 states that "No later than thirty (30) days following…

The Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will establish technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the survey design and implementation processes of PIAAC yield high-quality and internationally comparable data. This document provides a revised version of the technical standards and guidelines originally…

What to do about persistently low-performing schools is a pressing challenge for policymakers and educators across the nation. Schools that fail to make "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) for five consecutive years under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) must be "restructured". The 3,500 schools in the United States currently in…

For most high school non-completers, the GED[R] (General Educational Development) credential is the bridge to postsecondary education, but little is known about how successfully they could make that transition and whether their participation shifts across time. The American Council on Education (ACE) has begun a three-year longitudinal study to…

The paper analyzes the nature of the basic education, and points out that the scarcity, disparity and exclusiveness to a certain degree form the inner reasons of school choice in China. In review of the policy evolution of governing the school choice problems, and analyzing the policy framework of the current stage, the paper holds that expanding…

This year's Bracey Report identifies and discusses the research support for what the author considers to be three of the most important assumptions about how to reform public education: (1) High-quality schools can eliminate the achievement gap between whites and minorities; (2) Mayoral control of public schools is an improvement over the more…

Across the nation, the final stage of school restructuring is being reached by an inexorably increasing number of schools. Under the No Child Left Behind law, if a school does not make its adequate yearly progress targets after four previous years of being "in need of improvement," it must implement a fundamental restructuring plan. The…

The U.S. has set as a national goal the narrowing of the achievement gap between lower income and middle-class students, and that between racial and ethnic groups. This is a key purpose of the No Child Left Behind act, which relies primarily on assessment to promote changes within schools to accomplish that goal. However, out-of-school factors…

In 2007, the presidents and chancellors of nearly two dozen public postsecondary systems created the Access to Success Initiative to pursue two goals: (1) increase the number of college-educated adults in their respective states; and (2) ensure that their institutions' graduates included more young people from low-income and minority families by…

The Board of Trustees of the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) asked the Council of the Great City Schools, the nation's primary coalition of large urban school systems, to examine the staffing levels of the school system and determine whether the numbers of staff members employed were appropriate for a district serving as many students as…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) "Standards Movement Gaining Steam": Duncan Announces Plan to Commit Up to $350 Million for Assessments…

As education stakeholders look ahead to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization, there is near-universal consensus that the current federal accountability and school improvement systems need to be reinvented, infused with more and better data, and tailored to meet the individual needs of schools and students. Now,…

This paper addresses the possible content and organization of a National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) "Mega Report" based on the most populous five states and the largest metropolitan areas in each of them, namely California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas. It is not a "design" but is much more than an outline,…

Presented at the national conference for AERA (American Educational Research Association) in April 2009. The large variability of SAT taker population across states makes state-by-state comparisons of the SAT scores challenging. Using a mixture modeling approach, therefore, the current study presents a method of identifying subpopulations in terms…