Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), federal education mandates will be decreasing, which means states will have more flexibility and authority than they've had in decades. State education agency (SEA) leaders are confronting great change and great opportunity as many agencies move away from a focus on compliance with federal regulations,…

Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015) moves education further along the path toward becoming the evidence-based and data-driven profession that policy makers have continually called for. They have stressed the need for hard evidence to undergird educational decisions rather than relying on anecdotes and intuitions. This means teachers must…

American students graduate from college with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, leading to substantial repayment burdens and potentially inefficient shifts in spending patterns and career choices. A political trend towards austerity coupled with the rising student debt make the effective allocation of federal higher education resources and…

Inclusive rather than segregated schooling has been advocated in several significant international declarations during the past two decades. Even so children with significant intellectual disabilities are at greater risk of being excluded from mainstream education, unless particular efforts are made to support them in such settings. These children…

Educational policies such as Race to the Top in the USA affirm a central role for testing systems in government-driven reform efforts. Such reform policies are often referred to as the global education reform movement (GERM). Changes observed with the GERM style of testing demand socially engaged validity theories that include consequential…

Over the past two decades, the percentage of American students with disabilities educated in general classrooms with their nondisabled peers has risen by approximately 50%. This gradual but steady policy shift has been driven by two distinct narratives of organisational change. The social justice narrative espouses principles of equality and…

Over the past few years, students by the thousands have refused to take their state's standardized tests. This "opt-out" phenomenon has prompted debate in state legislatures and in Washington, putting states at risk of losing Title I funds. Advocates describe opt-out as a grassroots movement of parents concerned about overtesting,…

A substantial proportion of participants in public adult education programs struggle with "basic" academic print literacy skills. According to the 2014-2015 National Reporting System (NRS) data, 48.7% of the national adult basic education/adult secondary education (ABE/ ASE) population tested as reading at or below the "Low…

This article uses empirical data to consider the consequences of particular characteristics of instruction and testing in high school for the modeling and estimation of value-added measures of school or teacher effectiveness. Unlike Mathematics and Reading for most elementary and middle school grades, there is a lack of annual testing of students…

When congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), standardized testing in public schools became the law of the land. The ambitious legislation identified test-based accountability as the key to improving schools and, by extension, the long-term prospects of American schoolchildren. Thirteen years later, the debate over the federal…

Instructional and decision-making practices for English learners (ELs) with disabilities are garnering increased attention as the number of these students increases across the U.S. Although many critical educational decisions are made for these students, the determination that an EL with disabilities should be reclassified and exited from services…

For the past decade and a half, the fight to improve America's schools has been fought largely on two fronts: academic standards as one battleground, and accountability the other, with the issue of mandatory testing adding heat to a very public--and increasingly politicized--debate. The questions for policymakers and educators are as direct as…

The Issue: School improvement policy for the past few decades has been characterized by mandated lists of activities--both well intended and research based--designed to stimulate a dramatic turnaround in student achievement. However, this prescriptive approach to policy, particularly federal policy, has not resulted in the systemic changes needed…

California and the nation are at the crossroads of a major shift in school accountability policy. At the state level, California's Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) encourages the use of multiple measures of school performance used locally to support continuous improvement and strategic resource allocation. Similarly, the federal Every…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 supports digital learning and the effective use of technology. ESSA eliminates the Enhancing Education through Technology (Ed-Tech) State Program. However, it creates a new Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants program and authorizes up to $1.6 billion annually to provide formula grants to…