What is "teaching to the test," and can one detect evidence of this practice in state test scores? This paper unpacks this concept and empirically investigates one variant of it by analyzing test item--level data from three states' mathematics and reading tests. We show that NCLB-era state tests predictably emphasized some state…

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is a set of research-based strategies designed to improve reading comprehension, enhance students' content area learning, facilitate access to higher-level texts, and to promote student engagement. The present study examines how fidelity of implementation of CSR is associated with reading outcomes for students…

This study compared five value-added models and illustrated the impact of model choice on the estimates of teacher effectiveness. The five models covered a broad range of technical procedures, some very simplistic and others very sophisticated. The five value-added models were applied to a common data set to generate teacher-effectiveness measures…