ASSESSMENT, ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM

 Yes We Can: Telling Truths and Dispelling Myths About Race and Education in America

This report examines the educational practices and policies that have raised academic achievement for low-income and minority students, and offers compelling evidence that children of color excel in school when given the right teaching, right classes and right support.

Graduation Matters:
Improving Accountability for High School Graduation

This report details state-set goals for graduation rates under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, showing how improvement targets are often so low that they undercut the aim of significantly raising graduation rates. 

ESEA: Myths versus Realities

Answers to common questions about the new No Child Left Behind Act.

No Child Left Behind User Guide

This guide provides user-friendly information on NCLB that parents and communities can understand and use.  This guide highlights key aspects of the NCLB law in user-friendly language helping parents and community use NCLB for advocacy.

No Child Left Behind Fact Sheets

These quick easy one page fact sheets provide vital information on key provisions of NCLB.

Primary Progress, Secondary Challenge

This report examines state assessment results in reading and math between 2003 and 2005 and finds that progress in raising achievement and closing gaps continues to be strongest in the elementary grades. 

Stalled in Secondary

This report provides readers with data that shows three years after the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act, student achievement in secondary schools is lagging, and too few states are narrowing achievement gaps.

Measured Progress

This report documents that student achievement in reading and math is rising in the elementary grades in most states, and achievement gaps are narrowing, but in many places, the pace of these gains must accelerate dramatically if all students are to meet state standards by 2014.

The ABCs of "AYP"

Raising Achievement for All Students -- A brief report detailing the basic principles and core requirements of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) - the accountability mechanism in No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This report is one in a series on implementing NCLB.

ABC's of AYP PowerPoint

Questions to Ask About NCLB 

Public reporting of school, district, and state data is one of the cornerstones of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This document lists the information the public is entitled to under NCLB.

What New “AYP” Information Tells Us About Schools, States, and Public Education

This report documents how AYP provides important new information about academic achievement in America’s public schools.  This year’s first-ever application of the AYP formula is providing the foundation for school improvement efforts in all 50 states by uncovering large achievement gaps, identifying schools that have made significant progress, and recognizing schools with high percentages of low-income and minority children meeting state proficiency benchmarks.

 Creating an Appetite for Change: Leaders' Perspectives on Promoting K-16 Reform Through Community Collaboration

Policy Studies Associates, Inc., Washington D.C., 2000. 28 pages.

TEACHER QUALITY

Their Fair Share: How Texas-Sized Gaps in Teacher Quality Shortchange Poor and Minority Students

This follow-up study of Texas’s 50 largest school districts finds significant teacher quality and pay gaps throughout the state

Their Fair Share: How Teacher Salary Gaps Shortchange Poor Children in Texas

Their Fair Share: How Teacher Salary Gaps Shortchange Minority Children in Texas

These companion reports document funding patterns in the state’s 10 largest school systems, showing how average teacher salaries vary dramatically between schools within the same district. The reports describe gaps in per-teacher spending, and how those gaps stack the deck against the academic success of low-income, Hispanic and African American children.

Hidden Spending Gaps in California's School Districts - School-Level Hidden Gap Reports

This new series of Hidden Gap reports by The Education Trust-West looks at the impact of the hidden teacher-spending gaps in schools throughout California. The series is comprised of 12 district-specific reports that reveal school-level gaps in California’s largest school districts, along with a web-based tool that allows access to hidden gap information about every public school in California.

Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality

This report provides new information on the impact of teacher quality on student achievement and offers specific steps states should take to remedy the persistent practice of denying the best teachers to the children who need them the most.

The Real Value of Teachers: Using New Information about Teacher Effectiveness to Close the Achievement Gap:

This report lays out an ambitious policy agenda, premised on an exhaustive review of the existing research on teacher effectiveness—often referred to as “value-added.”

Missing the Mark: States’ Teacher Equity Plans Fall Short

This analysis of teacher-equity plans prepared by all 50 states and the District of Columbia finds that most states failed to properly analyze data that would determine whether poor and minority children get more than their fair share of unqualified, inexperienced, and out-of-field teachers.

Implementing Key Teacher Quality Provisions

NCLB requires states to adopt minimum standards for who can be considered a “highly qualified” teacher, measure the extent to which the state provides such teachers to all students, and adopt goals and plans to ensure that all students are taught by qualified teachers.  This paper discusses the key teacher quality provisions in NCLB.

Telling the Whole Truth (or Not) About Highly Qualified Teachers: New State Data

This report reveals that while some states made good faith efforts to report honest data, others fell far short.  A considerable number of states reported no teacher quality data at all, some states reported data that appears inconsistent, and many others failed to apply their own definitions of teacher quality before submitting their baseline data.  Consequently, the data provides a distorted picture of where states stand now, and what progress needs to be made.

In Need of Improvement: Ten Ways the U.S. Department of Education Has Failed to Live Up to Its Teacher Quality Commitments

A brief report criticizing the U.S. Department of Education for failing to make adequate progress implementing the crucial teacher quality provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

All Talk, No Action: Putting an End to Out-of-Field Teaching

This report offers the first available state-by-state analysis of the newest federal data on the percentage of core academic secondary school classes taught by a teacher without a major or minor in the subject.

Technical Appendix

Interpret With Caution: The First State Title II Reports on the Quality of Teacher Preparation

This report offers the first available state-by-state analysis of the newest federal data on the percentage of core academic secondary school classes taught by a teacher without a major or minor in the subject, a practice known as out-of-field teaching.

Good Teaching Matters: How Well-Qualified Teachers Can Close the Gap

This report marshals findings from several recent large-scale studies of student achievement to argue that policy makers hoping to boost student achievement must attend, first and foremost, to issues of teacher quality - the quality of teacher preparation, recruitment, licensure, hiring, assignment and ongoing professional development.

Honor in the Boxcar: Equalizing Teacher Quality

Not Good Enough: A Content Analysis of Teacher Licensing Examinations

This report shows that many states grant teaching licenses without requiring that individuals demonstrate knowledge of the subject area that they intend to teach.

HIGH SCHOOL

Gaining Traction, Gaining Ground: How Some High Schools Accelerate Learning for Struggling Students

This report is the result of a careful, on-the-ground study into the practices of public high schools that serve high concentrations of either low-income or minority children and have a strong track record accelerating learning for students who enter high school below grade level. This study compares and contrasts the practices of these high-impact schools with similar high schools that have only an average impact on student performance.

Technical Appendix

The Power to Change: High Schools that Help All Students Achieve

This report chronicles the stories of three very different high schools that are getting strong results for minority students and students from low-income families. The report demonstrates clearly that some high schools are succeeding, even under challenging circumstances.

On Course for Success

The Education Trust along with the ACT collaborated to write On Course for Success which provides examples of model high school courses that prepare students for the rigors of college and ultimately the work force.

Stalled in Secondary

This report provides readers with data that shows three years after the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act, student achievement in secondary schools is lagging, and too few states are narrowing achievement gaps.

A New Core Curriculum For All: Aiming High For Other People's Children

This report findings from several recent large-scale economic and education studies to argue that educators and policymakers working to ensure that all students are prepared for success in work and in college must attend, first and foremost, to ensuring that students take the kinds of rigorous courses that research makes clear are necessary for such success.

All Talk, No Action: Putting an End to Out-of-Field Teaching

This report offers the first available state-by-state analysis of the newest federal data on the percentage of core academic secondary school classes taught by a teacher without a major or minor in the subject.

Telling the Whole Truth (or Not) About High School Graduation: New State Data

This report highlights the need for states to better report their high school graduation data.  Ultimately, this data should result in greater awareness of how many students, particularly low-income and minority students, make it through high school.  A state-by-state analysis of graduation rates in all 50 states demonstrates that while some states seem to have seized this opportunity to provide an honest picture of high school graduation among their young people, many other states were lax in reporting complete and useful data. 

Ticket to Nowhere: The Gap Between Leaving High School and Entering College and High-Performance Jobs

This report documents significant gaps between the course and testing requirements for high school graduation and those for admission and placement in college.

Youth at the Crossroads: Facing High School and Beyond

HIGHER EDUCATION

Engines of Inequality: Diminishing Equity in the Nation’s Premier Public Universities

This report sharply criticizes most flagship universities in each of the 50 states for limiting access to minority students.

Promise Abandoned: How Policy Choices and Institutional Practices Restrict College Opportunities

This report sharply criticizes trends in federal, state, and college practices that discourage low-income and minority students from enrolling and graduating from college.

One Step from the Finish Line: Higher College-Graduation Rates are Within Our Reach

This report challenges the conventional wisdom about college-graduation rates by highlighting the strategies of some successful colleges and universities.

Choosing To Improve: Voices from Colleges and Universities with Better Graduation Rates

Offers a more detailed examination of the practices of these schools and outlines a growing body of research that tells us that what schools do matters a great deal -- from their efforts to keep new students engaged to their use of data to uncover obstacles to completion.

A Matter of Degrees

A new analysis reveals deep problems in the graduation rates at 4-year colleges and universities, but finds that some institutions do a much better job graduating some students than others.

FUNDING

The Funding Gap

This 2008 report documents continued injustice in state education funding patterns and for the first time shows how school districts serving high percentages of English Language Learners are shortchanged.

Technical Appendix
 

Their Fair Share: How Texas-Sized Gaps in Teacher Quality Shortchange Poor and Minority Students

This follow-up study of Texas’s 50 largest school districts finds significant teacher quality and pay gaps throughout the state

Their Fair Share: How Teacher Salary Gaps Shortchange Poor Children in Texas

Their Fair Share: How Teacher Salary Gaps Shortchange Minority Children in Texas

These companion reports document funding patterns in the state’s 10 largest school systems, showing how average teacher salaries vary dramatically between schools within the same district. The reports describe gaps in per-teacher spending, and how those gaps stack the deck against the academic success of low-income, Hispanic and African American children.