With more rigorous standards and testing at the forefront of educational reform across the nation, the rural school district in this study developed a strategic compensation plan with bonus pay based on student test scores as a teacher success incentive. A causal-comparative study was conducted to examine the effect of teacher merit pay levels on…

This report presents a question-driven exploration of growth and achievement data using SAS EVAAS reports. The purpose of this exploration was to bring additional data, information, and ways of thinking about student growth to ongoing district conversations about the measurement of campus-level student growth.

International assessments, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), are being used to recommend educational policies to improve student achievement. This study shows that the cross-sectional estimates behind such recommendations may be biased. We use a unique data set from one country that applied the PISA mathematics test…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has put many schools under a lot of pressure to meet its high demands. In this quantitative study, the effects that the NCLB act has had on students' opportunity to learn (OTL) and Subject Level Success (SS) from 2004 to 2012 in 9th, 10th, and 11th grade math coursework (Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, and…

Through comparative case study, we seek to understand the ways in which actors in high schools use and think about performance data. In particular, we compare data use in higher and lower value-added schools. Data use is conceptualized here as having access to a host of available performance data on students, using them to guide instructional…