Pushback against the perceived federal overreach into educational reform has led to renewed calls for a return to local control of schools. In contrast to this general trend, there has continued to be a strong national role for English learner (EL) accountability policies related to EL identification, monitoring and reclassification processes. In…

As an early Common Core booster, Michael Petrilli had hoped that by now--10 years after most states adopted the standards--the nation's schools would have logged tangible improvements in teaching and learning that resulted in higher student achievement. In this article, Petrilli reviews what Common Core is and discusses the work ahead that is…

Is the Common Core really "dead"? Though no longer called the Common Core in our three study states, the "new" college-and-career readiness standards still guide much of education policy in Texas, Ohio, and Kentucky. In our new feature article in "Educational Researcher," lead author Dr. Laura Desimone, along with…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how US school leaders and teachers make sense of multiple accountability policies, including the Common Core State Standards and teacher evaluation, and how this process relates to school priorities and classroom practice. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a comparative case study…

This article reports on why states are quitting the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). The two consortia sought to develop state-of-the-art assessments that focused on problem solving and the application of knowledge, and that moved away from former tests'…

Traditional grading practices have been used for over one hundred years, and to date, there have been no meaningful research reports to support it. As such, some schools are transitioning to standards-based grading, a practice based upon several evidence-based principles. The purpose of this research primer is to provide an overview of the…

This paper provides a history of the standardized testing and accountability movement, the curriculum standards attached to the accountability movement, and the attempted shift to common core. Student poverty and its impact on student achievement the focus of this paper. Recognizing the impact of poverty on student achievement as measured by…

The Common Core State Standards, released in 2010, were rapidly adopted by more than 40 states. Champions maintained that these rigorous standards would transform American education, but the initiative went on to encounter a bumpy path. A decade on, what are we to make of this ambitious effort? What kind of impact, if any, has it had on the…

Objectives: A team of education researchers is leading a three-year project to develop and implement an online system for reporting and research on state student assessment policies across all states (Indicator 12). Theoretical Framework In the past five years as more rigorous standards have been adopted by many states, a key issue for state…

How do assessments for learning differ from assessments of learning? What is the purpose of grading? After nearly two decades of immersion in standards-based curriculua and instruction, our nation's educators are often still confounded by the (admittedly complex) landscape of standards, assessment, and reporting. In "Answers to Essential…

Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane have gathered a diverse group of scholars to examine the shifting federal role in education across the presidential administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. While the administrations were vastly different, one thing remained constant: an ongoing and significant expansion of the federal role in…

The Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT), like many other language-related organizations, flourishes in the context of periodic educational agendas and reforms, in turn, influenced by economic, political, and social ideologies of the time, and it is therefore instructive to revisit briefly the educational landscape of the previous two…

Students from low-income backgrounds face a variety of social and economic challenges that make it more difficult for them to achieve their potential. 2 To make matters worse, low-income students often attend public schools that receive less funding than schools serving more affluent students. It is also clear that some states do a far better job…

Despite common conceptions, evidence on whether No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has had adverse effects for low achieving students is mixed. We hypothesize that the incentive to shift attention away from the lowest achieving students increases with the rigor of state standards. Using panel data from students in North Carolina, we exploit two natural…

The full policy implications of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Mathematics and English Language Arts K-12 are just beginning to unfold across the 45 states (and DC) that are working to implement them. The CCSS will impact almost all key state education policies in fundamental ways. As was learned from the 1990-2005 era of systemic…