A policy forum held May 11-13, 2011 to provide input from stakeholders to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) focused on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) accountability reporting system known as the State Performance Plan/Annual Performance Report (SPP/APR) process. Participants discussed their assessment of the…

Over the last decade, the changes in Lithuanian pre-school and pre-primary education have been predetermined by changes in paradigms of children's education and strategic education documents that provided for guidelines of high quality children's (self-)education, an increasing attention of society to the quality of children's education, training…

Government scrutiny and intensified oversight have dramatically changed the landscape of education in recent years. Observers want to know how schools compare, which district is best, which states are spending the most per student on education, whether reforms are making a difference, and why so many students are failing. Some of these questions…

The purpose of this paper is to help countries understand some of the "key principles and characteristics of an effective student assessment system". The focus is on assessment of student learning and achievement at the K-12 level. The paper extracts principles and guidelines from countries' experiences, professional testing standards,…

This study is designed to identify the effective implementation practices that special education administrators enact to alleviate the negative and enforce the positive effects of contextual factors when implementing comprehensive school reform. Two research questions were designed to address this issue. Research Question One sought to identify…

In 2009-10, 92% of WCPSS schools met Expected or High Growth as measured by the North Carolina ABCs program, a 3.5 percentage point increase from 2008-09. Fifty-four percent of the schools made High Growth and 38% made Expected Growth. All subgroups saw their percentages of students meeting growth increase to above 55% in 2009-10; with the…

"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) A Time for Deeper Learning: New Alliance Brief Says Deeper Learning Is Imperative for All Students; (2) Setting New…

The outcome of university ranking is of much interest and concern to the many stakeholders, including university's sponsors, administrators, staff, current and prospective students, and the public. The results of rankings presented in the form of league tables, analogous to football league tables, attract more attention than do the processes by…

Pressure from the U.S. Department of Education has led some states to curb a testing exemption that applies only to the 1 percent of students with the most severe disabilities, but districts that have long used that flexibility to win some breathing room in their accountability systems are bristling. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act,…

This exploratory study sought to determine if a popular school-based drug prevention program might be effective in schools that are making adequate yearly progress (AYP). Thirty-four schools with grades 6 through 8 in 11 states were randomly assigned either to receive Project ALERT (n = 17) or to a control group (n = 17); of these, 10 intervention…

International assessments provide important knowledge about science education and help inform decisions about policies, programmes, and practices in participating countries. In 2006, science was the primary domain for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), supported by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development…

The UK higher education sector is facing a significant reduction in the level of public funding over the next few years. In August 2010 the Cabinet Secretary informed groups of vice-chancellors that they should prepare for cuts of 35% over the four years 2011-2015, the period covered by the next Comprehensive Spending Review. It is inevitable…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law in December 2015, is the latest reauthorization of one of the most influential pieces of federal education legislation, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The law had not been reauthorized since 2001 when the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed, and ESSA is the result of…

The purposes of this publication are: (1) to report the status of higher education equity in the United States and to identify changes over time in measures of equity; and (2) to identify policies and practices that promote and hinder progress; and to illustrate the need for increased support of policies, programs and practices that not only…

There is no shortage of challenges in school education. Some of the biggest challenges we face can appear frustratingly intractable. Despite reform efforts, regular government reviews and ongoing calls for change, progress in addressing our most significant challenges is often slow and solutions continue to elude us. In this paper Professor Geoff…