The practice of journalism has long been based on the premise that a receptive audience awaits the content and that citizens--as participants in a democracy--will use the news to make sound decisions. Yet mainstream journalism has lost much of its audience to purveyors of disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation, a situation that has…

School inspections are a key component of the accountability system in many education systems, including England. The judgments and reports produced through these inspections are widely used by parents when they are choosing a school for their children. But should they be? This paper presents new evidence on this issue. We illustrate how parents…

The National Academy of Education (NAEd) undertook this consensus report on the evaluation and improvement of teacher preparation programs (TPPs). Specifically, this consensus report aims to (1) identify and disseminate best practices for evaluating and improving TPPs to promote teacher effectiveness and student achievement; (2) provide…

In this article, we examine teachers' use of knowledge sources in meetings where they discuss and formulate initiatives and solutions to develop existing teaching practice based on national test results. While practices of data use have been extensively researched, less attention has been given to the content of data use practices. Analyses of…

School ratings are a ubiquitous feature of the U.S. educational system. Alongside state-mandated measures of school performance, non-state organizations such as GreatSchools.org and Niche have created consumer-oriented systems of school ratings that draw on publicly available information about schools. Claiming the purpose of their rating systems…

While much has been written about the effects of standardized testing on student achievement, less work has addressed how parents take up this information. Drawing on a survey of 286 parents in a diverse urban school district, this research illuminates three aspects of parental response to test score information: 1) how parents relate various…

Twenty-first century education reform shifted the pursuit of public education from democratic principles to the pursuit of private interests for individual benefit. Reasoning from an applied behavior economic theoretical framework assumes consumers seeking economic benefits from their public schools will seek public schools with more resources.…

Parent involvement in a child's education has been demonstrated to increase child maintenance and generalization of skills taught in early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) settings to their home environments, improve parent-child relationships, and decrease parent stress. Parent coaching is a way to support parents' development of…

A key assumption of accountability policies is that educators will use data to improve their instruction. In practice, however, data use is quite hard, and more districts are looking to instructional coaches to support their teachers. The purpose of this descriptive analysis is to examine how instructional coaches in elementary and middle school…

In recent years, education data have become both more easily accessible and more important than ever to decisions about K-12 policies and practice. Under the "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA), states are required to publish data on how students, including English Learners (ELs), are performing in areas such as reading, math, and…

As trained leaders for whom accountability and a strong work ethic are second nature, Chicagoland veterans are uniquely equipped to meet the demands of today's jobs. That veterans typically possess the skills and character needed to excel in the civilian workplace makes reports on the state of veteran unemployment more troubling. Through the…

Growth of voucher and education savings account (ESA) programs has drawn attention to how states ensure accountability and transparency to parents and the public. With over half of voucher and ESA programs designed for students with disabilities, there is interest in the information parents receive about special education services and rights when…

The Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) directs states and districts to identify equity gaps in students' access to excellent educators and transformative school leaders. States are encouraged to use Title II funds strategically in order to identify and remedy these gaps. A new report from The Education Trust draws on ESSA documents and state…