This research brief recaps a study of California charter schools. After a discussion of the key distinctions among charter schools, the brief focuses on the following questions: (1) Who attends charter schools? (2) How does student achievement in charter schools compare with that in conventional public schools? (3) What oversight do chartering…

This booklet contains reference group summaries for the Pupil Evaluation Program tests, the preliminary competency tests, the Regents competency test, and the Regents examinations that were administered during the 1985-86 school year in New York State. Summaries are also included for high school graduation results. Results are presented in tabular…

This document provides tables of enrollment and staff data among nonpublic schools in New York. One of the 11 tables compares public with nonpublic school enrollment. Most tables include notes of explanation and of criteria used for categorizing schools. Tables included are the following: (1) Nonpublic School Enrollment by Level and Affiliation,…

When properly understood, scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) support the hypothesis that the performance of American students as measured by the SAT is steadily improving. As the overall pool of SAT takers increases and as pressures to adopt SAT scores as an administrative measure of instructional performance mount, SAT averages at the…

This progress report describes the development and field testing of the School Mastery of Reading Test (SMRT). The SMRT was administered in May 1986 to 889 fourth graders in nine schools in Brooklyn, New York. Counts of students tested in each school and school profile data are provided. Machine scoring procedures are detailed, and results…

The development of local norms using the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities was part of a larger study, the purpose of which was to identify the percentage of Arizona school children having a handicap. The first step in this part of the project, which involved screening for communication disorders, was the selection of tests to identify…

The Texas Assessment of Minimum Skills (TEAMS) is a mandated criterion-referenced test administered to students in grades 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 in Texas public schools. This report by the Austin Independent School District (AISD) contains an executive summary of TEAMS results, an analysis of performance, and attachments. Among the major findings…

Critiques views of the one-room country school experience in the Midwest states. Describes advances an alternative interpretation grounded in the social, political, and economic circumstances that impinged on local institutions, arguing that these schools may not have been the "laboratories of democracy" that conventional wisdom calls…

The analysis of North Carolina performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is part of a larger program addressing the improvement of public school students' performance on skills measured by the SAT. This second of two volumes presents individual school system profiles for the mathematics and verbal sections of the SAT for the 126 school…

A strategy that has been initiated to respond to assertions that out-of-date norms distort standardized achievement test results involves annually updating the norms for achievement tests to avoid the production of inflated scores through aging norms. The effect of the application of normative trend data to the obtained test results in an urban…

This report describes and presents the 1984-85 results of the norm-referenced and criterion-referenced testing programs used in the Los Angeles Unified School District (California) to evaluate student progress and to identify instructional areas needing remediation. The norm-referenced Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS), Form U, is used to…

Data are presented to allow comparisons of school districts on various characteristics that result from, or are closely connected with, education in South Carolina. This document presents 115 tables of ranked characteristics related to public education in South Carolina. The characteristics are arranged alphabetically by the 91 school district or…

Diverse information is compiled to begin to address the question of how well students in Alaska are achieving. In 1987, each of the 55 districts in Alaska submitted results of its standardized testing program for Reading, Reading Comprehension, Mathematics, Mathematics Problem Solving, and Language Arts for the three school years from 1984-85…

Results of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test are used as a screening device for selecting students for remedial work in the Reading and Study Skills Center (R-S) at New York Community College (NYCC). A descriptive analysis of the fall 1967 day session freshmen showed that the average freshman at NYCC was reading at the 12.6 grade level, or .4 grade…

This "report card" grades the state of education, health, special needs services, and economic security among Illinois children in 1993. Illinois ranked 38th out of the 50 states in financial contribution per student for education, but had a high disparity in revenues per pupil at the county level, thus earning a "D+" grade for…