Reading: Any US School

  How well does your school teach children to read? In every city, state, and district, some schools are far more effective than their demographic peers. These charts will help you to identify them. Charts are based on the most recent publicly available data. Click here for a guide to creating school and district comparison charts.   Alabama (2023) Alaska (2019) Arizona (2021) Arkansas (2022) California (2022) Colorado (2022) Connecticut (2022) Delaware (2022) DC (2022) Florida (2022) Georgia … Read More

Tennessee’s Value Added Assessment: Why It’s Important and How It Works

Value added assessment of school performance is a breakthrough in the measurement of educational performance.  It tells users how much students’ gained in achievement in the just-completed year relative to their past rate of educational progress–irrespective of starting level and the various social, economic, ethnic, and other factors thought to limit or enhance student learning.  Value-added scores, however, are limited to grades 4 through 8, i.e., grades in which there is standardized testing in the same subjects. Read … Read More

School Ranking Charts

Tennessee was the first state to systematically gather and disseminate district and school-level value-added data in 1995.  It was and is the most statistically sophisticated methodology in use.  The Education Consumers Foundation was the first to compile Tennessee’s TVAAS scores into online, interactive and printable graphics that allow users to see schools statewide ranked on the basis of their effectiveness in lifting student achievement.  Since that time, numerous states and school districts have adopted what is essentially the same … Read More

Aligning Teacher Training with Public Policy

posted in: Briefings & Reports |

by J. E. Stone Stone, J. E. (2000). Aligning teacher training with public policy. The State Education Standard, 1(1), 35-38.   The American Council on Education (ACE) recently issued a report calling for colleges and universities to either embrace independent assessment of the quality of their teacher education programs or to close them.[1] The Council, which represents American colleges and universities, fears that the weak academic standards maintained by teacher education programs will damage the reputations of their … Read More

Aligning Teacher Training with Public Policy

posted in: Briefings & Reports |

(click here for full article) (click here to download a PDF of this article) By J. E. Stone The State Education Standard, Winter 2000, pp. 34-38.   Briefing John Q. Public is alarmed by continuing reports of failing schools. Lester R. Legislator is concerned, too, with ever-increasing school funding and little progress. Everyone feels cheated. Why is that? Surprisingly, it’s not the teachers’ fault. It goes deeper. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the … Read More

Teacher Evaluation and Student Achievement

(click here for full article) (click here to download a PDF of this article) By James H. Stronge & Pamela D. Tucker Washington, DC: National Education Association, 2000.   Briefing Everyone wants to reward good teaching, but how to fairly and objectively measure it? Clearly, good teaching boosts student achievement but so does a student’s home life and neighborhood. The key is to measure the teacher’s contribution separately-isolated from these other influences? According to James Stronge and Pamela Tucker, two … Read More

Facing the Classroom Challenge

Facing the Classroom Challenge, Teacher Quality and Teacher Training in California’s Schools of Education (click here for full article) (click here to download a PDF of this article) By Lance T. Izumi and K. Gwynne Coburn San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 2001.   Briefing Finally, someone has put their finger on the problem: Schools may want to improve but the teaching skills taught to their teachers aren’t up to the job In Facing the Classroom Challenge, … Read More

Direct Instruction and the Teaching of Early Reading

posted in: Briefings & Reports |

Direct Instruction and the Teaching of Early Reading, Wisconsin’s Teacher-Led Insurgency (click here for full article) (click here to download a PDF of this article) By Mark C. Schug, Sara G. Tarver, & Richard D. Western Thiensville, WI: Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, 2001.   Briefing Everyone knows reading is the foundation of learning. Students know it. Parents know it. Teachers know it. So why isn’t it taught using only the most carefully tested methods? Direct Instruction (DI) is arguably the most … Read More

Parents and School

The 150-Year Struggle for Control in American Education The following material was excerpted from Chapter 2. Parents and Schools is not available online.   The Peripheral Parent: Making the Most of Marginality In the 1920S, there was widespread support in the United States for the idea that parents and teachers should work together. However, Americans were still uncertain about the nature and extent of this cooperation. It remained unclear to what degree parents should join in the education … Read More

Parents and Schools

Parents and Schools: The 150-Year Struggle for Control in American Education (click here for full article) (Click here to download the PDF of this article) By William W. Cutler, III Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2000.   Briefing Why aren’t schools more responsive to parent and taxpayer demands for improvement? Because they are a monopoly and they just don’t care? Because they are increasingly influenced by unions and put member interests ahead of the public interest? Or, is … Read More

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