The USC School Performance Dashboard, now in its seventh year, draws on California school data from 2003-2012 to rate charter schools on academic and financial measures of performance. It also provides an accompanying interactive site at www.uscrossier.org/ceg/. Unlike other school databases, this one assigns values--high, medium, low--to the…

Over half of the states now require students to pass a high stakes exit exam before being allowed to graduate from high school. No Child Left Behind requires that standardized testing be included to determine whether or not a school makes Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). The purpose of this study is to examine the results of the Georgia High School…

In an effort to bring more knowledge about "what works" to educational practitioners, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has made significant investments in developing and disseminating focused, rigorous research projects in order to increase the supply of and demand for this research in educational decision making. These efforts…

Driven by the compulsion to improve the evident paucity in quality of care, especially in critical access hospitals in the United States, policy makers, healthcare providers, and administrators have taken the advise of researchers suggesting the integration of technology in healthcare. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) System composed of multiple…

Guided by its First to the Top legislation enacted in early 2010, Tennessee is one of the first States to implement a comprehensive teacher evaluation system based on multiple measures of teacher performance. Full implementation began in the 2011-2012 school year. Similar to other States engaged in rethinking teacher evaluation systems, Tennessee…

One approach to halting the childhood obesity epidemic has been the modification of foods available to children during the school day. In recent years there has been an increased focus on obesity prevention efforts among children ages birth to 5 and the role of child care settings in prevention efforts. Head Start serves as an important venue for…

Institutional characteristics of preschool centers can influence the successful implementation of professional development programming. This article provides an overview of a dynamic Head Start teacher professional development program. The program, conducted by a well-respected theatre-in-education organization, was designed to help preschool…

Policy affecting teacher education evolves from a wide range of sources, including public perceptions and attitudes, federal initiatives, current trends in public schools and higher education, the visions and whims of politicians, and the profession's own initiatives. No matter how it emerges, it is not unusual for policy ebbs and flows to result…

Some schools in South Dakota have gone one-to-one, and other schools have one computer cart for two grade levels. Some teachers refuse to use their computers for anything but email, and others are incorporating web 2.0 tools into their project-based learning curricula. But one thing that is consistent across the board is the need for…

This paper investigates the contribution of mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) and curriculum materials to the mathematical quality of instruction by comparing the enactment of a fractions problem taught by two teachers with differing MKT. It was found that MKT seem to support teachers' precise use of mathematical language and to prevent…

In 2009, President Obama and his administration sought to overhaul the existing educational reform program and launched their initiative titled Race to the Top (RTTT). RTTT, a competitive grant program, comprised six priorities designed to help states reform their current educational systems. Priority five calls for states to evaluate their…

The number of students attending afterschool programs has skyrocketed in recent years, currently serving an estimated 8.4 million children (Afterschool Alliance, 2009). Consequently, the demand for high quality afterschool programs, and to learn from successful ones, has never been greater. This "Making Afterschool Programs Better"…

Given the importance of the early childhood period as a time when the foundation is laid for later language and literacy, it is important to determine what activities and experiences lead to positive language and literacy outcomes in early childhood. This Fact Sheet reviews fifteen experimentally-evaluated programs and intervention strategies that…

This testimony discusses the findings from our recent work on fragmentation, overlap, and potential duplication in federally funded programs that support teacher quality. We recently issued a report addressing fragmentation, overlap, and potential duplication in federal programs that outlined opportunities to reduce potential duplication across a…

This report summarizes the results of the school year (SY) 2008-2009 review of applications approved for free or reduced-price benefits under the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program. Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) selected nearly 279,000 applications for verification review from among 8.6 million applications approved for…