The purpose of the current study was to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of state-level policies and practices concerning youth with disabilities in secondary day treatment and residential (DTR) schools, as well as juvenile correctional (JC) schools for committed youth. A survey of state directors of special education or their designees…

While No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires all students to be "proficient" in math and reading by 2014, the precedent-setting 2002 federal law also allows each state to determine its own level of proficiency. It's an odd discordance at best. It has led to the bizarre situation in which some states achieve handsome proficiency results by…

In the 1990s, Virginia launched one of the nation's most ambitious standards-based reform efforts. Encouraged by a budding national accountability movement and motivated by conservative distrust of the public school establishment, state officials sought to clarify what students needed to know and to hold students and educators accountable for…

Countless reports have analyzed the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 on teacher quality and student achievement. What many of these reports truly leave behind, however, is the reality that state governments--not the federal government--have the strongest impact on the work of America's 3.1 million teachers. With that in mind, three…