To understand the achievement gap between Black and White students, test performance on Delaware statewide assessments was studied. The study focused on Black-White test score gaps in reading, mathematics, and writing across grades 3, 5, 8, and 10 by achievement level, item format, and gender within each racial/ethnic group over time. The…

This report describes a districtwide evaluation of the instructional services provided to English language learners (ELLs) enrolled in Structured English Immersion classrooms in grades 1-3. The program uses two models (teaching in English, with the primary language for clarification, and teaching primarily in English, with other instruction in the…

Over the past decade, the standards-based reform movement in education has focused attention on the responsibility of schools and school systems to produce results in student learning. Nationally this focus is most evident with the implementation of accountability provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. However, even…

This pilot project was designed as a collaborative effort to serve substance abusing women and their young children. The goals were to improve the health and welfare of these families by early identification of pregnant substance abusers; improve access to and coordination of health care services and chemical dependency treatment; and provide…

This study invesitigated possible reasons for the low performance on the text-based writing assessment of the Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) in 2000, especially for grades 3 and 5, and considered ways to improve classroom instruction. In the first part of the study, a panel of teachers reviewed the anchor papers from the assessment and…

This Preschool Parent Survey was designed to gather information on parents' perceptions of the Detroit Public School (DPS) preschool program and to assess the child care needs of parents of the district's preschool students. The 18-item questionnaire was mailed to the homes of 2,000 families in Detroit. Of the 2,000 surveys, 640 were completed and…

This report reanalyzes test score data from Florida public schools in the context of determining the effects of vouchers on student performance. In response to a recent report from the Manhattan Institute, An Evaluation of the Florida A-Plus Accountability and School Choice Program, by J. P. Greene, 2001, it offers a different perspective and an…

This report, authorized by the Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, contains information on the School Meals Initiative for Healthy Children (SMI), a reform of school-meals programs aimed at upgrading the nutritional content of school meals. The purpose of the study was to describe and evaluate: (1) overall…

This report reviews implementation of Phase 1 of the New York City Board of Education's Performance Driven Budgeting (PDB) initiative from 1997-00. This initiative generated a new element in school-based planning for instructional improvement, explicitly linking school-level budgeting and efforts to improve student and school performance. The…

This annual report presents results from the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) of the College Board's Admissions Testing Program and the American College Testing (ACT) Program's original and enhanced ACT assessment for prior year graduating seniors. The last decade had brought some recovery over the decline of the previous 10 years in both Texas and…

This annual report presents Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and American College Testing (ACT) Program results for Texas for the 1993-94 graduating class. The last decade brought some recovery over the previous decade's decline in both Texas and national SAT averages, with relatively more improvement in Texas within the last 8 years. The average…

This report presents Texas results for the 1997-98 graduating class for both the College Board's SAT I: Reasoning Test (SAT) and the ACT Assessment. In 1998, numbers of both SAT I- and ACT-tested graduates were up from the previous year. The highest number of Texas high school graduates ever took one of the two examinations. The last decade…

This annual report presents results from the College Board's new SAT I: Reasoning Test (Formerly the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT) and the American College Testing Program's Enhanced ACT Assessment for 1994-1995 graduating seniors. The last decade showed some recovery over the previous decade's decline in both Texas and national SAT/SAT I…

This report presents results from the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) tests administered in the spring of 1997 and results from end of course tests in Algebra and Biology. Only a slight decrease in the percentage passing the eighth-grade social studies test marred the otherwise across-the-board rise in percentages meeting minimum…

The Exit Skills Summer Learning Academies of the Detroit Public Schools, Michigan, were created to provide additional instruction to students in kindergarten and grades one through five who did not master specific objectives during the regular school year. A total of 174 schools participated in the 1998-1999 Exit Skills Summer Learning Academies,…