State efforts at establishing accountability programs have not been successful because few states could or did install the essential ingredients of accountability systems and even fewer took the elements they had very seriously; accountability systems are based on the false assumption that the people who operate an educational system actually have…

The source of most of the opposition to educational assessment is fear on the part of administrators and teachers that assessment will be used as an instrument of evaluation. Assessment plans make it impossible to identify individual teachers or schools. Thus, the fear that someone may be penalized because of a bad assessment is not realistic.…

A study of nine family support services delivered by 133 public and private agencies in New York State revealed that problems of service identification and definition and variations in location, type, auspice, size, and structure of service agencies affected availability and accessibility of family support services statewide. (Author/CL)

The commissioner of the New York State Education Department describes a plan to improve elementary and secondary education, with particular emphasis on assuring excellence and equity. Implications for gifted students include a flexible study pace, intensive summer study and interdisciplinary projects. (CL)

In 1998, Florida voters passed a unique amendment to the state constitution requiring the state to make "adequate provision...for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools." This brief examines how Florida courts are likely to interpret this constitutional amendment and whether Florida's funding system will…

Despite shortcomings, technique is used often to gauge economic results of social projects. (Editor)

Education priorities in Oklahoma. (RA)

Outlines the major challenges associated with conducting program evaluation in today's system of multilevel stakeholders and offers recommendations derived from the experiences of conducting a program evaluation in which several stakeholders were intrinsically involved in the evaluation process and the results. (SLD)

Today, state education agencies (SEAs) and their leaders face unprecedented demands. What was once a low-profile job of managing federal aid, providing curricular guidance, and ensuring compliance with various legal obligations is now a far more visible and politically fraught task. The new roles required of state education agencies due to the No…

In 2009, the National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) launched an evaluation of eight developmental summer bridge programs in Texas to assess whether these programs reduce the need for developmental coursework and improve student outcomes in college. The evaluation uses an experimental design to measure the effects of these programs on…

2010 was a pioneering year for Massachusetts public schools. State leaders recognized that while the Commonwealth leads the nation in student achievement on national measures such as NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), more needed to be done to close the persistent achievement gaps between our wealthy and poor students. Combining a…

Since 2002, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) has collected and reported data on state policies that require students to pass a state assessment in order to receive a high school diploma. The state policies associated with these assessments, also known as high school exit exams, have undergone a number of changes over the past ten years. For…

The National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities (NDPC-SD) was assigned the task of compiling, analyzing, and summarizing the data for Indicator 2--Dropout--from the FFY 2009 Annual Performance Reports (APRs) and the revised State Performance Plans (SPPs), which were submitted to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)…

The purpose of the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) program is to improve the quality of early learning and development and close the achievement gap for children with high needs. The RTT-ELC grant competition focuses on improving early learning and development for young children by supporting States' efforts to increase the…

The "2013 State Preschool Yearbook" is the newest edition of our annual report profiling state-funded prekindergarten programs in the United States. This latest "Yearbook" presents data on state-funded prekindergarten during the 2012-2013 school year as well as documenting a decade of progress since the first…