This issue brief, based on a meeting of a group of distinguished researchers, educators, and policymakers convened by the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) explores lessons from research and practice about the role of an intentional curriculum and professional development and supports for teachers in closing the achievement gap for…

In March 2005, Governor Tom Vilsack and a committee of 12 legislators endorsed proposals intended to "make Iowa's public schools more efficient and improve achievement." Among the proposals was one calling for an education commission that would recommend to the 2007 Legislature a minimum school district and high school size. In light of…

This brief summarizes the findings of Mathematica's Valuing Competencies study, which analyzed the effects of students' high school competencies on their postsecondary earnings and educational attainment. The effects of several competency measures, including academic achievement (as captured by test scores) and composite measures of leadership…

Rural development is often presumed to rest on educational improvement, and high levels of mathematics achievement might seem essential to improving the quality of rural life and the viability of rural communities. Efforts to promote math achievement growth are usually limited to curricular and instructional innovations, while contextual factors…

The statistical technique, "Zero-One Linear Programming," that has successfully been used to create multiple tests with similar characteristics (e.g., item difficulties, test information and test specifications) in the area of educational measurement, was deemed to be a suitable method for creating multiple sets of matched samples to be…

This summative evaluation of magnet programs employed a quasi-experimental design to investigate whether or not students enrolled in magnet programs gained any achievement advantage over students who were not enrolled in a magnet program. Researchers used Zero-One Linear Programming to draw multiple sets of matched samples from the non-magnet…

This study investigated the relationship between the scales used for the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Tests (PACT) assessments and the RIT scales used to report performance on Northwest Evaluation Association tests. The RIT scale was developed using Rasch scaling methodologies. RIT-based tests are used to inform a variety of educational…

A review of research yields nine conclusions concerning mathematics achievement among rural and urban students. Among them are that currently a national rural vs. non-rural mathematics achievement gap does not exist; at the state level, a rural vs. non-rural achievement gap exists in 40 percent of the states, and that gap is evenly split between…

This review of the literature discusses 15 studies that have been conducted on the effect of computer-based instruction on the academic achievement of at-risk students in elementary schools in the United States. The at-risk population consists of those students who are in the free- and reduced-school lunch programs, those students who are…

As noted in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD's) "PISA 2000 Technical Report" (OECD, 2002), the Austrian sample for the PISA 2000 assessment did not adequately cover students enrolled in combined school and work-based vocational programmes as required by the OECD's technical standards for PISA. The…

The Council of the Great City Schools prepared this report to review the Dayton (Ohio) Public Schools District's performance as a way to help address its declining enrollment and stagnant student achievement. The goal of the project was to determine why the academic performance of Dayton's students was not improving and what the district could do…

This year's Brown Center Report examines several issues that are important to No Child Left Behind and ongoing efforts to improve American schools. The first section of the report analyzes the latest data on student achievement and asks how the nation's students are doing in reading and mathematics. Achievement in rural schools receives a closer…

This study examined the differences in reading and mathematics achievement and the discipline records of eighth grade students who lived with both of their biological parents and those who did not. Participating were 199 eighth grade middle school students in rural Georgia. The 103 students in the traditionally parented group came from their…

This document contains four issues of "NAEPfacts," a report series about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Issue 1 discusses data from the NAEP 1996 Long-Term Reading Assessment, which shows that overall student reading performance has increased for both 9- and 13-year-olds. Issue 2 reports that data from the NAEP…

This booklet provides teachers with information about the No Child Left Behind Act and how it supports teachers. It includes an overview of the law's "highly qualified" teacher provisions as well as information about other aspects of the law. The booklet offers: "Foreword" (letters from the President of the United States and the Secretary of…