"The Condition of Education" is a congressionally mandated report that provides an annual portrait of education in the United States. This document includes information from "The Condition of Education 2009" about children and youth with disabilities. The number and percentage of children and youth receiving special education…

Research for Action's third and final report completes a three-year evaluation study of the Pennsylvania High School Coaching Initiative (PAHSCI). This report presents lessons from the PAHSCI model of school-based instructional coaching and mentoring as a vehicle for job-embedded professional learning. Reporting from an analysis using qualitative…

This report describes Maryland's latest approaches to dealing with restructuring schools and other schools in NCLB improvement. Information for this report was obtained between September 2008 and January 2009 from interviews with Maryland State Department of Education officials and with administrators in three Maryland districts: Anne Arundel…

The new "Weighted Student Formula Yearbook 2009" from the Reason Foundation provides a simple framework for touting the successes of states and urban school districts that grant greater fiscal autonomy to schools. The report defines the Weighted Student Formula (WSF) reform extremely broadly, presenting a variety of reforms under the WSF umbrella.…

According to a new study of Milwaukee public schools, student achievement has benefited from voucher-based school competition. A novel method, using geocoding, was proposed for measuring the degree of competition within the city of Milwaukee and, in turn, for determining whether such competition has increased or decreased the achievement of public…

In response to a growing dialogue at the local, state and national levels around the idea of restructuring teacher pay to include performance measures, the American Association of School Administrators surveyed a randomly selected sample of its members to gauge their feedback and interest in pay-for-performance programs. AASA launched this survey…

Higher education in Louisiana is leading the nation in linking growth of student learning to teacher preparation programs that prepare new teachers. The Louisiana Board of Regents is currently implementing a Value Added Teacher Preparation Assessment. The model examines the degree to which the educational attainment of students taught by recent…

This article considers potential impediments to the estimation of teacher quality caused primarily by the purposeful behavior of families, administrators, and teachers. The discussion highlights the benefits of accounting for student and school differences through a value-added modeling approach that incorporates a student's history of family,…

On September 8, 2001, Semra Sexer--wife of Turkish Republic president Ahmet Sezer and a retired teacher--started the Support Campaign for National Education (2003, 2004, 2005). This campaign aimed at finding problems in national education and offering solutions. Assessment meetings about the campaign were held on May 5-6, 2003, in Istanbul;…

Recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics examines trends in public school enrollment, student achievement in history and civics, and student perceptions about school safety.

Using data to redesign instruction is a means of increasing student achievement. Educators in Camden County (Georgia) Schools have used data from benchmark testing since 1999. They hired a commercial vendor to design a benchmark test that is administered four times a year and use the data to generate subject-area reports that can be further…

To help inform policymakers and the public about the progress of education in the United States, Congress has mandated that the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) produce an annual report, "The Condition of Education." This year's report presents 42 indicators of important developments and trends in U.S. education. These…

The federal government has had a long-standing commitment to ensuring access of English Learner (EL) students to a meaningful education. As early as 1968, the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" ("ESEA") contained provisions for supporting the education of EL students and in its 1974 landmark decision, "Lau v.…

This document is intended to assist State Education Agency (SEA) and Lead Agency (LA) staff and technical assistance providers in designing a meaningful evaluation for the State Performance Plan (SPP)/Annual Performance Report (APR) improvement activities. It provides: (1) information about the relevance of evaluation in the context of improvement…

The purpose of this large-scale, multi-year, national study is to determine whether some early elementary school math curricula are more effective than others at improving student math achievement, thereby providing educators with information that may be useful for making adequate yearly progress. The main questions being addressed by the study…