Background: Within the last few years, the focus on educational accountability has shifted from holding students responsible for their own performance to holding those shown to impact student performance responsible--students' teachers. Encouraged and financially incentivized by federal programs, states are becoming ever more reliant on…

In the past several decades, Boston has been a proving ground for new strategies such as mayoral control, charter schools, and expanded access to early childhood education. Located in a state known for rigorous standards and accountability, Boston Public Schools (BPS) has consistently ranked among the top-performing large public school districts…

The 2019-20 Pro-Kid Policy Agenda for California is the comprehensive roadmap at the state level to ensure that all children have the necessary supports to reach their full potential. California has an obligation to end systemic injustices that create barriers to kids of color, as well as kids living in poverty and undocumented kids, from growing…

In the last four columns the authors introduced the concept of critical thinking competency standards and elaborated a number of such standards, targeting the analysis of thought, the assessment of thought, and the cultivation of intellectual virtues. In this column they focus on three subject-specific critical thinking competency standards. It is…

The executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, who also is a former superintendent of education in Kentucky and Arkansas argues that successful implementation of the Common Core depends on adhering to two concepts: having an effect at scale and understanding that the effort ahead is a systems issue. This work depends on…

One of the rumors making the rounds of K-12 educators goes something like this: The Common Core State Standards do not allow "prereading"--the pedagogical practice meant to help students better understand a text they are about to read--or for that matter any classroom activities that contextualize a text through outside sources. The interesting…

Results from new state tests in Kentucky--the first in the nation explicitly tied to the Common Core State Standards--show that the share of students scoring "proficient" or better in reading and math dropped by roughly a third or more in both elementary and middle school the first year the tests were given. Kentucky in 2010 was the…

Professional learning and professional development are the essential tools employed in schools, districts, and universities in order to increase teachers' knowledge and skills. To gain the most from professional development in middle schools, the experiences and activities must be based on standards. Few researchers explore how teachers think…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandated that states implement standards and test-based accountability systems. In theory, local educators are free to select the means for teaching the standards so long as students achieve a predetermined proficiency level on the exams. What is unclear, however, is how this theory plays out in schools…

This edition of the Brown Center Report on American Education marks the first issue of volume three--and eleventh issue over all. The first installment was published in 2000, just as the Presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Al Gore were winding down. Education was an important issue in that campaign. It has not been thus far in the current…

High school teachers and leaders with responsibility for English language arts (ELA) need this handy guide to successfully implement the Common Core in their respective grade levels. Getting a copy for every staff member ensures they know: (1) How grades 11-12 ELA content differs from and builds upon 9-10 standards; (2) How the four strands…

The Common Core State Standards represent an ambitious effort to improve teaching and learning at an unprecedented scale. Adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia, these standards are an attempt to dramatically change what students and teachers do in school, by redefining high-level, thought-provoking instruction as the norm for all…

Backers of the common-core academic standards have worked for years to secure the support of a diverse collection of elected officials, academic scholars, and school employees. Now they're ramping up efforts to court a different and potentially critically important audience: parents. A number of national organizations are churning out written and…

With many states crafting assessments based on the common-core standards--and an increasing emphasis on college and career readiness--some are rethinking the kind of tests high school students must pass to graduate, or whether to use such exit exams at all. Twenty-five states, enrolling a total of 34.1 million students, make exit exams a…

This article introduces the guiding principles of sustainable education. It starts from the observation that many education systems around the world have launched ambitious programs aiming to raise academic standards and to reconcile concerns for excellence with concerns for equity. However, many of these programs have failed to reach their…