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Last spring's sudden shift to remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted K-12 education in an unprecedented way. Upon Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's waiver of federally mandated state testing for spring 2020, it also triggered the first nationwide break in state testing in half a century. With students returning to school for the 2020-21 school year, state boards of education will need to get a handle on exactly where students are in their learning in order to target resources and support. States also will need to restart annual assessments mandated by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in order to track progress over time, particularly for vulnerable subgroups of students. Yet even before the pandemic, two recent FutureEd reports found that state testing systems were already in transition. A national analysis by FutureEd found that between 2014 and 2019, lawmakers in 36 states passed legislation to respond to concerns about overtesting, including by reducing testing in a variety of ways. That trend is likely to continue, as opponents to standardized testing eye the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to leverage more cuts--and even end state testing entirely. At the same time, interest is growing in innovations that could make state testing systems more useful for teachers and students by moving away from a single, end-of-year test to more frequent assessments that better reflect classroom curriculum and instruction. As state boards think about the right questions to ask about testing in order to make smart decisions moving forward, it is important to understand the history of state summative assessment in the United States, the increasing fragmentation of the state testing landscape, and the larger political context.

Continuous improvement methods, widely used in fields such as medicine, can help educators identify and try out adjustments in practice, known as "change ideas," which contribute to better outcomes and more equitable systems for students. Since 2018, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in 24 organizations across the United States to support networks of schools to use continuous improvement methods to advance equity in education -- with the specific aim to increase the number of Black and Latino students and students experiencing poverty who earn a high school diploma, enroll in college, and are on track for college success. This article discusses how the Networks for School Improvement support educators to use data to adapt research- and evidence-based practices to their specific contexts through cycles of continuous inquiry.

BackgroundOver the past half century the prevalence of childhood disability increased dramatically, coupled with notable increases in the prevalence of mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions. This study provides a detailed assessment of recent trends in childhood disability in relation to health conditions and sociodemographic factors.MethodsSecondary data analysis of National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) datasets 2001-2002, 2004-2005, 2007-2008, and 2010-2011 (N = 198888) was conducted to calculate the prevalence, rate of change, severity, and sociodemographic disparities of parent-reported childhood disability.ResultsThe prevalence of childhood disability has continued to increase, growing by 15.6% between 2001-2002 and 2010-2011. Nearly 6 million children were considered disabled in 2010-2011. Children living in poverty experienced the highest rates of disability, 102.6 cases per 1000 population in 2010-2011, but unexpectedly, children living in households with incomes ≥ 400% above the federal poverty level experienced the largest increase (28.4%) over this 10-year period. The percentage of disability cases related to any physical health condition declined 11.8% during the decade, whereas cases related to any neurodevelopmental or mental health condition increased by 20.9%.ConclusionsOver the past decade, parent-reported childhood disability steadily increased. As childhood disability due to physical conditions declined, there was a large increase in disabilities due to neurodevelopmental or mental health problems. For the first time since the NHIS began tracking childhood disability in 1957, the rise in reported prevalence is disproportionately occurring among socially advantaged families. This unexpected finding highlights the need to better understand the social, medical, and environmental factors influencing parent reports of childhood disability.

Precocious readers represent a small portion of children who enter school each year. Researchers have investigated the environmental characteristics, acquisition process, psycholinguistic and neuropsychological characteristics, and academic skills of these children. Despite the research findings in the area, researchers and clinicians are still unable to predict who these children will be, describe how precocious readers fit into our current theories of emergent literacy and reading development, and confidently state whether this knowledge could be generalized beyond the precocious reader to the typically reading child. Forty years of research in this area is reviewed. Suggestions for improving the accessibility and generalizability of knowledge about precocious readers are provided. (Contains 2 tables.)

OBJECTIVE: To examine the prevalence of parent–provider discussions of family and community health risks during well-child visits and the gaps between which issues are discussed and which issues parents would like to discuss.METHODS: Data came from the National Survey of Early Childhood Health, a nationally representative sample of parents of 2068 children aged 4 to 35 months. The outcome measures were 1) the reported discussions with pediatric clinicians about 7 family and community health risks and 2) whether the parent believes that pediatric clinicians should ask parents about each risk.RESULTS: Most parents believe that pediatric providers should discuss topics such as smoking in the household, financial difficulties, and emotional support available to the parent. However, with the exception of “household smoking,” fewer than half of parents have been asked about these topics by their child’s clinician. Parents of black and Hispanic children were more likely than parents of white children to be asked about several of these issues, as were parents of the youngest children and those with publicly financed health insurance. The greatest gap between parents’ views and their reports of discussion with the clinician occur for parents of white children and older children. Among parents who hold the view that a topic should be discussed, parents of white and older children are less likely than others to report discussing some or all family and community health risks.CONCLUSION: The low frequency of discussions for many topics indicates potential unmet need. More universal surveillance of parents with young children might ensure that needs are not missed, particularly given that strong majorities of parents view family and community topics, with the exception of community violence, as appropriate for discussion in clinic visits.

Teachers, curriculum experts, and other educators work together using online tools developed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create high-quality, useful lessons and research-based instructional tools incorporating the Common Core State Standards.

When Jerry D. Weast became the superintendent of the Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools in 1999, he spent the summer poring over student-achievement results and demographic trends. Then he created a map to illustrate what he'd found. The map divided the suburban district, just outside the nation's capital, into two distinct areas, which he dubbed the "red zone" and the "green zone." Most poor, minority, and English-language learners lived in the red zone, an urbanized core that was attracting a growing immigrant population. The green zone was predominantly white, affluent, and English-speaking. Academic performance closely mirrored the demographic trends, with the lowest-performing schools overwhelmingly concentrated in the red zone. Without swift and deliberate action, the district faced the prospect of becoming split in two, divided by opportunity. To Mr. Weast, the solution was obvious. Montgomery County needed a differentiated strategy that funneled extra attention and resources to schools in the red zone, while increasing academic rigor for everyone. Since then, Montgomery County's leaders have maintained a delicate balance between "raising the bar and closing the gap" that has enabled the nation's 16th-largest school district to narrow achievement gaps while retaining the support of wealthier, highly educated parents. But as the district moves onto the much tougher shoals of middle school reform, that balance could be sorely tested.

After a period of top-down control under the mayor, the New York City system is freeing schools to run their own affairs--and holding them accountable for results. This fall, for the first time, each of the district's 1,456 public schools gained unprecedented control over budgetary and instructional decisions that previously resided with the central office. That decision making includes the power to select a school-support organization to meet their needs, rather than taking what the central office delivers. In exchange, the city's department of education this month released "progress reports" that grade every school from A to F, based primarily on the test-score growth of their students over time. Successful schools will get additional dollars, while unsuccessful ones can be closed and replaced with new schools. The goal is to stimulate innovation, dynamism, and differentiation--something one does not hear about in public education. The push to empower schools reflects a sharp departure from the first few years of Chancellor Joel I. Klein and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's school reform strategy, known as Children First.

When Arthur Levine, then the president of Teachers College at Columbia University, wrote a scathing report in 2005 on the preparation of American school leaders, the one institution he singled out as a "promising model" was not even in the United States. This article describes England's National College for School Leadership. Created by the government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998, with the mission of "every child in a well-led school, every leader a learner," the college was designed to modernize the way school leaders are developed and supported at every stage of their careers, and to elevate their status. Located in Nottingham in a state-of-the-art conference facility, with soaring glass windows overlooking a lake, the college is a free-standing institution, independent of any university and almost wholly funded by the government. The focus is on developing individuals who can lead instructional improvement in their schools by drawing on both research and practice, aligned with the country's national standards. One of the college's key responsibilities is the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH). Introduced in 1997 to prepare candidates for the headship, or principalship, and underpinned by a set of national standards, the credential will become mandatory for all newly appointed head teachers by April 2009. In addition to the NPQH, the college offers programs for teachers who are just beginning to take on leadership roles, school business managers, school teams wishing to improve their effectiveness, and experienced heads who want to exercise leadership beyond their own schools.

For decades, preservice training for principals looked something like this: While working as teachers, they took occasional courses at an education school on such topics as school finance, law, and educational theory. After a few years, they completed a culminating field assignment, which might have involved shadowing their own principals. Then candidates applied for jobs in administration. This article describes the shift in the forms of principal preparation. The focus is less on creating efficient managers than on preparing individuals who can lead a school to higher student achievement. Would-be principals now go through their courses of study in a predetermined order, and in cohorts with others in the same program. Seminars build upon one another to produce candidates who know how to analyze instruction, create learning opportunities for teachers, and strategize about how to move a school forward based on data. Field experiences start early and involve the actual exercise of leadership in a school building. Additionally, districts are taking on a larger role in shaping school leadership, from who gets admitted to training programs to how they are mentored and evaluated. The reasons for the shift are clear. The push for unprecedented levels of improvement in student performance, epitomized by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, requires a different kind of leadership: focused on instruction and achievement. The Southern Regional Education Board, which represents 16 states, urges states to adopt rigorous, well-defined standards for school leaders; provide a curriculum framework to guide program redesign; create an external process for auditing the quality of program curricula; and strengthen accountability for results, including measures of graduates' on-the-job performance and the achievement of students in their schools.

This article features Long Beach Unified School District, the 2003 winner of a prestigious prize in urban education. The district of more than 90,000 students is the first winner of the award to return to the competition as a finalist. Its reappearance on the list after earning the prize in 2003 raises interesting questions about how districts sustain and deepen school improvement over time. Located in Southern California, adjacent to Los Angeles, Long Beach is a heavily industrialized port city with a student population that's highly diverse. Under the leadership of former Superintendent Carl Cohn, who led the district from 1992 to 2002, Long Beach made impressive gains in its elementary and middle schools. During his tenure, the district adopted a standards-based curriculum-and-assessment system, forged a strong partnership with local colleges and universities, and enacted a mandatory school uniform policy in grades K-8. It also ended social promotion in key grades and required all students to be able to read by the end of 3rd grade. When Mr. Cohn retired, the school board did not follow the typical pattern of looking for a high-profile outsider. Instead, it unanimously selected Christopher Steinhauser, a self-described "poster child" for the district. Now in his 26th year in the school system, Mr. Steinhauser grew up in the city, attended the public schools and the local institutions of higher education, and began his career as a teacher's aide at Signal Hill Elementary School. He worked closely with Mr. Cohn for a dozen years, first as the district's director of special projects--heading up many of the new K-8 initiatives--and then as a deputy superintendent. Far from jettisoning the earlier reform efforts, Mr. Steinhauser has built on them, taking some of the same strategies and tools that have worked in the elementary and middle schools and pushing them up into the high schools.

This article discusses teachers' use of hand-held computers in a rural New Mexico district to assess student's reading progress. With the help of a federal Reading First grant, the district began using the DIBELS assessments across its elementary schools along with the mCLASS: DIBELS assessment and reporting system. The district's experience helps illustrate the ways educators can use one popular assessment tool to better inform and shape classroom teaching and learning--a concept often labeled "formative assessment." The assessments include thrice-yearly benchmark tests to help screen and group students, as well as more-frequent, one-minute "progress monitoring" measures. Those measures track youngsters' responses to instruction on a particular literacy skill, such as initial sound fluency, phoneme segmentation, reading of nonsense words, or oral-reading fluency. Using the mCLASS: DIBELS assessment system, developed by Wireless Generation, a for-profit company based in New York City, teachers are able to give and record DIBELS results on hand-held computers and get instant feedback. Teachers can then upload the results to the Wireless Generation Web site to track class, school, and district performance over time using online reports.

The No Child Left Behind Act is slated to be reauthorized in 2007, and both President Bush and the leaders of the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress have signaled their interest in keeping renewal of the law on schedule. Many observers expect the debate over renewing the law--which itself was a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, first passed in 1965--to touch on at least a half-dozen other big ideas for changes. Those themes include proposals for national academic standards; accountability models that measure students' learning growth; testing and achievement targets for special populations, such as students with disabilities and English-language learners; revisions in the sanctions for schools that miss their performance targets; greater accountability for high schools; and more attention to teacher quality. These ideas are discussed in this article.

Faced with stiffer economic competition and worried about the skills of their future workforces, many states are trying to connect education from preschool through postsecondary so that more students are prepared for further study, work, and citizenship. In the past decade, 30 states have created what are often called "P-16" councils or initiatives designed to increase collaboration across those levels of education, according to the Denver-based Education Commission of the States. In most states, the governance, finance, data, and accountability systems for pre-K-12 and higher education have largely operated separately, with different legislative committees, governing boards, and state agencies. That divide, policy experts say, has contributed to a maze of disconnected policies and practices that is hard for young people and their families to navigate. It is also wasted taxpayer dollars, such as when the public pays for students to relearn material in college that should have been mastered in high school.

Preparing students to succeed in the workforce is increasingly seen as a key to global competitiveness. But employers aren't sending clear-cut answers on what young people need to know and be able to do on the job. In efforts to obtain information about workforce readiness, various agencies sent out surveys to various employers. One such agency is the New York City-based Conference Board which sent out a survey to some 10,000 human-resource and training executives to ask them what knowledge and skills their companies are looking for in recent job entrants. (Contains 3 graphs and 1 photograph.)

This article presents different views by various professors on the issue of college readiness. Also discussed are the problems encountered by students as a part of college readiness. The discussion stems from a set of alarming statistics about college-completion rates. While nearly three-fourths of recent high school graduates enter some form of postsecondary education, far too many of those who start college never finish. One reason for the concern about college readiness is the large proportion of high school graduates who end up taking remedial courses for which they earn no credit. Here, the author describes studies and programs that have begun to follow high school graduates into college to look at the factors that contribute to students' success. (Contains 2 tables.)

With an urgency not seen in decades, policy leaders concerned about America's global competitiveness and widening income gaps within U.S. society are propelling issues of academic and workforce preparation to the forefront of the nation's education policy debates. Worried that current expectations and structure are ill suited to the 21st century politicians, scholars, and business executives are pushing to ground educational standards far more closely in the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the new economy. To that end they are arguing for closer connection between K-12 and postsecondary education, on the assumption that decent-paying jobs with opportunities for advancement will require at least some education beyond high school as well as lifelong learning to adjust to a fluid labor market. On one side of the debate are those who believe that fundamental shifts in the economy, brought about largely by technology, are creating a premium for knowledge and skills. Students must be prepared to take advantage of those new opportunities, they warn, or risk joining the ranks of the working poor. On the other side are economists who see a more gradual rise in skill requirements and no shortage of college-educated workers over the next decade. They question the extent to which education offers a solution to the United States' broader economic problems. Meanwhile, large disagreements remain about how best to redesign secondary and postsecondary institutions to meet the shifting demands. (Contains 3 graphs.)

The federal government has responded to criticism of the No Child Left Behind Act by giving states greater flexibility in how to comply. Analysts worry that the law's purpose is being lost along the way. Since U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced that she would take a "common sense" approach to carrying out the No Child Left Behind Act, educators have been watching closely to see whether she keeps that promise. Opinions are shared in this article.

The nation's governors adjourned their two-day summit on high schools armed with an expanded arsenal of political and financial commitments to prepare all students for success in college and the workplace. But despite the enthusiastic launch of two major initiatives at the February 26-27, 2005 meeting here, observers cautioned that improving American high schools is a long, arduous task that will likely fail unless policymakers can convince large sectors of the public that change is actually needed. Furthermore, in one of the summit's highlights, six philanthropies, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced a $42 million initiative to help states raise high school graduation and college-readiness rates. Thirteen states, which educate more than a third of U.S. students, also joined a new coalition committed to transforming high schools by raising standards, redesigning curricula, and tying high school tests and accountability systems to the knowledge and skills needed for life after high school. That view was echoed by many people during and after the event. They said that now may be the golden opportunity to tackle an institution long impervious to change. But educators also said that simply raising standards and demanding more of students would not produce the radical redesign of high schools called for by the summit's keynote speaker, Microsoft Corporation Chairman Bill Gates. And to address Mr. Gates' concerns, educators said, governors must be willing to tackle such tough issues as teacher preparation and working conditions, student engagement, school organization and structure, and support for students to accelerate their learning.

This article discusses the increasing number of schools that met all of their 2004 annual achievement targets under U.S. federal law. Over half the states released at least preliminary lists of the number of schools that had made adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind Act, based on 2003-04 test data. In general, the percentage of schools that met all their targets either held steady or increased compared with the previous school year. Despite overall signs of progress, the number of schools "in need of improvement" (schools that fail to make adequate progress for two or more years in a row) appears to have increased in many states. Many state officials warn that the real test could come in the following years, when states must significantly raise their Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) benchmarks for the first time, and many states will begin testing in more grades.

The history of value-added methods in Britain dates back at least to 1982. That is when a handful of secondary schools in northeast England agreed to share data, on a confidential basis, about how much progress they were making in getting students to pass the A-level examinations required to enter universities. At least three methods of value-added analysis are now used in England. The simplest, and the one now employed by the national government, measures the progress of individual students based solely on their prior attainment. Other measures control for prior attainment in addition to a range of school-level factors that might affect students' progress, but are outside a school's control. The most complicated methods--often known as multilevel modeling--take into account both school-level characteristics and those of individual classrooms and pupils that may also impinge on academic growth.

In this article, the author discusses how England refines its accountability reforms. When the Conservative government crafted the Education Reform Act of 1988, which mandates a national curriculum for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as well as national-curriculum tests at ages 7, 11, and 14, schools in England were permitted to secede from the local education authority and receive funding directly form the national government. The national government set up the Office for Standards in Education, or OFSTED, which regularly inspects schools and produces high-stakes reports on their performance, that are published in print and online. When the Labor government came to power in 1997, it built on that framework, pursuing a strategy that embraces both pressure and support for individual schools. The government has provided about 5 percent real growth in education spending and launched national literacy and numeracy strategies for primary schools. It also further devolved budgetary decisions to individual schools. In this article, the author also describes the government's efforts to improve the accountability system in England.

Assessment efforts document the academic library's contributions toward student success and institutional outcomes. Use of an Assessment Cycle at Pierce College Library enhances outcomes-based education and facilitates the library's role in the institutional assessment plan. Three examples of the Cycle are used to illustrate its application in instruction, in all library departments, and at the institutional level. Working collaboratively on assessment, both internally within the library and externally with other campus programs and departments, provides for maximum effectiveness and furthers student learning. (Contains 7 figures and 5 tables.)

Provides a short history of educational governance in America during the 20th century. Includes description of the erosion of local control through court decisions, federal legislation, collective bargaining, state accountability, and parental choice. Describes alternative approaches to school governance. (PKP)

Reports that school principles have endorsed grant-funded tutoring programs at their schools in which professional and pre-service teachers from Creighton University are the educators. States that the goal is to increase reading and mathematical skills in young children. Describes the process of enrollment and states that great improvements have been made in academic achievement. (CW)

While visiting school-to-work sites, the author observed numerous programs that teach students the "new basics" or "basics-plus" skills needed for success in today's economy. These skills include an ability to use technology, communicate ideas and information orally and in writing, work in groups, solve knotty problems, understand how systems work, and collect, analyze, and organize data. Exemplary programs are profiled. (MLH)

The article describes a large, middle class suburban high school's controversial efforts to make improvements, noting its difficulty in convincing parents, teachers, and school board members that a school with a fine reputation did not really provide students with the education they needed for the future. (SM)

Total quality management (TQM), a holistic approach to managing complex organizations, replaces top-down management with decentralized "customer-driven" decision making. TQM has been adopted by many schools and school systems nationwide. However, the context of public schooling makes implementation of TQM in education significantly different from its use in business. (IAH)

Discusses the book "Politics, Markets, and America's Schools," by John Chubb and Terry Moe. They claim the school reform movement has not worked, and a massive, deadening bureaucracy is ruining American education. They suggest a new system for effective schooling based on good organization and parental choice. (SM)