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When Congress reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), much of the debate will undoubtedly focus on the accountability requirements added to Title I by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Title I authorizes federal aid to school districts to educate low-achieving children in low-income areas. Among the most controversial of these NCLB requirements are the provisions for determining whether schools and districts have made adequate yearly progress (AYP) in raising student achievement in reading and mathematics. This background paper from the Center on Education Policy (CEP) explores some of the factors that have influenced recent trends in the national percentage of public schools that have not made AYP, out of the total number of schools that reported AYP results. This paper is intended to serve as a companion to the report, "Update with 2009-10 Data and Five-Year Trends: How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress?" (CEP, 2011). As discussed in more detail in that five-year trend report, the national percentage of public schools failing to make AYP rose from 29% in 2006 to an estimated 38% in 2010 and actually decreased in two of the interim years. Although 38% is a record high percentage of schools not making AYP, it is still lower than what many observers had predicted by this point in NCLB implementation. CEP's analysis focused on 10 large or medium-sized states that had the greatest increases or decreases in the number of schools not making AYP or had other noteworthy AYP trends: California, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington. Its analysis revealed several factors, in addition to changes in student learning, that appear to account for some of the fluctuations in the national percentage of schools not making AYP and may help explain why these percentages have not escalated as quickly as some analysts have predicted. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) National trends in the percentage of schools not making AYP have been affected disproportionately by trends in a limited subset of states; (2) Changes in state testing policies have slowed, or even reversed, increases in the number of schools failing to make AYP in several states; (3) The NCLB "safe harbor" provision has also helped somewhat in keeping down the share of schools failing to make AYP in certain states; (4) The use of growth models appears to have had a limited impact on AYP trends in most of the growth model states analyzed; (5) In most of the states analyzed, the number of schools failing to make AYP increased substantially in the years when the state's achievement targets went up; (6) States that introduced new tests saw substantial short-term increases or decreases in the number of schools failing to make AYP; (7) In some states, changes in the number of schools not making AYP are largely attributable to changes in the cut scores defining "proficient" performance on state tests; (8) North Carolina's experience suggests that counting proficient scores from retests can reduce the number of schools failing to make AYP--especially in the short term; and (9) Even if most or all states adopt common standards and common assessments, variations in state accountability policies could continue to make it impossible to arrive at meaningful comparisons about the performance of different states. (Contains 6 footnotes.) [For the companion report, "Update with 2009-10 Data and Five-Year Trends: How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress?," see ED518993.]

Digital learning makes possible the "unbundling" of school provisions--that is, it allows children to be served by providers from almost anywhere, in new and more customized ways. At the same time, because it destandardizes and decentralizes educational delivery, digital education is far harder to bring under the yoke of the quality-control systems and metrics that have been devised for traditional school structures. In this paper, Hess explores the pros and cons of input regulation, outcome-based accountability, and market signals as solutions to the quality challenge. In the end, he recommends using all three approaches in careful combination so as to leverage their strengths and offset their weaknesses. In practice, that means demanding transparent financial information from providers, holding them to account for student achievement gains whenever possible, and developing "crowd-sourcing" reporting systems to help educators, parents, and students identify the most effective purveyors of online learning. (Contains 14 footnotes.)

This paper reports results from a resume-based field experiment designed to examine employer preferences for job applicants who attended for-profit colleges. For-profit colleges have seen sharp increases in enrollment in recent years despite alternatives such as public community colleges being much cheaper. We sent almost 9,000 fictitious resumes of young applicants who recently completed their schooling to online job postings in six occupational categories and tracked employer callback rates. We find no evidence that employers prefer applicants with resumes listing a for-profit college relative to those whose resumes list either a community college or no college at all. Appended to the paper are; (1) Supplementary Tables and (2) Experiment Details.

Results of a study concerning the relationships between state policies and private college enrollments, enrollment demographics, and finance are presented. After considering national enrollment trends in the independent sector, attention is directed to the impacts on private colleges of state fiscal policies, including aid to private colleges and their students as well as tuition levels at the public sector. Also considered are results of research in five states on the nature and impacts on the private sector of states' higher education planning and program review policies, as well as policies toward information collection and dissemination in higher education. The research also examines the impact of state policies concerning access/choice. Three model state policy postures toward private higher education are addressed: the laissez-faire approach (California and Texas), the market-competitive posture (Indiana), and the regulatory posture (New York and Illinois). Data were also obtained from a survey of state independent college association executive officers from 19 states. Appended is the questionnaire for this survey, which was conducted by the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities. (SW)

What happens when teams from 57 cities building afterschool systems gather to discuss two key system responsibilities--improving afterschool programs and using data for informed decision-making? Lots of rich discussion. This report covers a national afterschool conference held in February 2013. It details what mayors, program providers, system leaders, researchers and others had to say on matters ranging from how to measure afterschool performance to how to boost program quality. [This conference was organized by: American Youth Policy Forum, The Collaborative for Building After School Systems, The Forum for Youth Investment, the National League of Cities Institute for Youth, Education & Families, and the Wallace Foundation.]

Despite advances made in broadening access to higher education, some evidence suggests that college completion rates have actually declined over time, and attainment gaps stemming from race/ethnicity and socioeconomic background have remained stubbornly persistent (Bound, Lovenheim, & Turner, 2010; National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). Colleges and universities are searching for ways to better identify students with lower odds of postsecondary success and develop programs to support their persistence and completion. This paper presents collaborative research from four different states -- Texas, New York, Virginia and Illinois -- examining the feasibility and accuracy of models that predict students' likelihood of degree completion using only administrative data on students' pre-college characteristics and early college experiences. The authors employed fairly simple statistical methods on statewide longitudinal data systems (also known as student unit records systems or "SURDS") to predict degree completion for undergraduate students. Their focus was on the overall predictive validity of these models, which is often neglected in educational research that focuses on relationships between student characteristics and degree completion (American Diploma Project, 2004; Adelman, 1997, 1999, 2006; Attewell, Heil & Reisel, 2011; Braxton, 2000; Chen & Carroll, 2005; Complete College America, 2011; Horn, Kojaku & Carroll, 2001; Tinto, 1994, 2012). [The paper was written with Christopher Maggio, Frederick Tucker, Jay Brooks, Xiaodan Hu, Tod Massa, Feng Raoking, and Nathan Wilson.]

Adults who are out of work typically have low levels of education and limited work experience. In response, there has been an increased interest among leaders from the higher education and business communities to expand "earn and learn" opportunities that connect people to both postsecondary education and a career. Apprenticeships are a growing strategy in the U.S. to allow people to earn a postsecondary credential and gain job experience that will lead to a well-paying career. This paper provides an overview of registered apprenticeship programs, including pre-apprenticeships and youth apprenticeships, and describes their recent growth. It also discusses several barriers to further expansion and strategies to improve programs, including to: (1) Increase funding and align funds for postsecondary education and workforce development; (2) Expand to industries not typically served by apprenticeships, especially in growing fields such as health care and information technology; (3) Increase diversity of participants, especially with intentional outreach to communities of color and women; and (4) Expand access to pre-apprenticeships and youth apprenticeships aligned with postsecondary pathways. The paper features profiles of apprenticeship programs at Harper College and San Jacinto College. These programs illustrate how community colleges are working to expand apprenticeship opportunities for students to gain jobs in growing and in-demand industries in their regions. The profiles also detail how the colleges are working to diversify apprenticeship programs to non-traditional industries and reach out to a diverse range of students, especially women and students of color.

This is the third paper on the topic of outcomes-based funding written by Dennis Jones for Complete College America. The first paper, "Performance Funding: From Idea to Action" (ED535356), proposed a set of design and implementation principles to help states develop and implement their own outcomes-based funding models. The second paper, "Outcomes-Based Funding: The Wave of Implementation" (2013) described features of models being implemented in states and the extent to which they conformed to the principles presented in the first paper. This third paper documents the continued spread of adoption with an increased focus in the field on whether outcomes are equitable across populations, with states disaggregating results by race, ethnicity, age and income and reporting those publicly. The additional purposes of this paper are threefold: (1) To reinforce the point that outcomes-based funding is but one component of the overall financing model for higher education in a state. The power of outcomes-based funding models is enhanced if the other components are designed so as to strengthen the alignment between funding streams and desired results; (2) To once again revisit the lists of design and implementation principles presented in the earlier document and (slightly) revise them in light of states' actions and experience; and (3) To describe the models that are being employed in implementing states and to assess the extent of conformance with the proffered set of design and implementation principles. This for the purpose of identifying areas of non-conformance to catalog potential weaknesses in models and questioning the applicability of certain of the principles. As with earlier versions of the document, the ultimate objective is to provide clear, straightforward guidance to policymakers who are searching for ways to better align their approaches to resource allocation with the educational outcomes that are of highest priority in their state.

Given the positive impacts of the small, stand-alone early college model and the desire to provide those benefits to more students, organizations have begun efforts to scale up the early college model in a variety of settings. These efforts have been supported by the federal government, particularly by the Investing in Innovation (i3) program. This paper will describe current efforts to take the early college model and apply it in multiple settings and It will describe programs being supported by three i3 grants, focusing on the commonalities of these three efforts. The specific questions addressed by this paper include: 1) How are providers conceptualizing the scaling up of the early college model? 2) What adaptations are expected as the model is being scaled up? 3) What are early lessons learned from the scale-up efforts? The results report that one of the primary lessons learned by project and school staff was the importance of early and frequent communication about the goals of the project and the importance of working with leadership at both the district and school levels.

Only a quarter of the class of 2008 graduated from Alain Locke Senior High School in Los Angeles after four years. This was unsurprising since nearly 60 percent of the class had left Locke by the end of their sophomore year. A majority of Locke teachers--frustrated with the school's mediocrity--petitioned to allow charter management organization Green Dot Public Schools to transform the school. Locke reopened its doors in the fall with new landscaping, new teachers, a series of new small schools within the school, and new expectations. Two years into the transformation, a record 73 percent of sophomore students were still there at the end of the year. Green Dot Public Schools's transformation of Locke is one of the most notable examples of a charter management organization, or CMO, turning around a chronically underperforming traditional public school. And the Obama administration would like to see more of it. This policy paper explores the role of charter schools in turning around the nation's lowest-performing high schools. Based on conversations with charter school operators, school district staff, researchers, and education reform experts, it examines how some pioneering cities--Los Angeles and Philadelphia in particular--are partnering with local charter operators to turn around some of their dropout factories and improve college readiness and graduation rates. The paper explores barriers and opportunities for collaboration between charter management organizations and districts to turn around high schools. It finds that the extent to which districts have access to CMOs in their area, the degree of expertise that CMOs have in targeting secondary schools, and factors affecting the charter sector's growth all have some influence on the likelihood of success from these partnerships. (Contains 91 endnotes.) [For related report, "Review of Charting New Territory," see ED523958.]

The National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL), an organization dedicated to redesigning and expanding school time to improve opportunities and outcomes for high poverty students, and the Education Commission of the States (ECS), with a mission to foster both the exchange of ideas on education issues among the states and long range strategic thinking, have joined forces to produce this review. Their goal is to help education leaders to better understand the complexities of time related policy and its far reaching educational implications. In exploring how policymakers and educators have dealt with the matter of school time at the federal, state, and local levels, NCTL and ECS hope to accelerate the national conversation on how they can best leverage the power of time to realize the vision of a high quality education for all. This paper offers a number of recommendations highlighting fresh ways that policy and research can best support efforts to expand learning time in schools. State policies on instructional time are appended. (Contains 82 notes and 51 footnotes.) [This paper was supported by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.]

Extensive education research on the contribution of teachers to student achievement produces two generally accepted results. First, teacher quality varies substantially as measured by the value added to student achievement or future academic attainment or earnings. Second, variables often used to determine entry into the profession and salaries--including postgraduate schooling, experience, and licensing examination scores--appear to explain little of the variation in teacher quality so measured. (Early experience is the exception.) Together, these findings underscore explicitly that observed teacher characteristics do not represent teacher quality. The precise method of attributing differences in classroom achievement to teachers is the subject of considerable discussion and analysis. The authors begin by briefly outlining the general analytical framework that forms the basis of much of the work in this area and then describe the range of results from recent efforts to measure the variance of teacher effectiveness. (Contains 1 table.) [This paper is published in "The American Economic Review" 100(2), May 2010.]

Longitudinal Data Systems (LDS) house student data spanning multiple years and schools. First and foremost among LDS information resources is the Data Quality Campaign (DQC). The DQC is a nationwide consortium assembled to support states, districts, and schools as they design and implement data systems to improve student outcomes. The research and resources in this paper have been divided into three categories: (1) Necessity; (2) Implementing; and (3) Utilizing. This paper is a response to a request asking for a bibliography of the seminal pieces of research related to ARRA Assurance #2--Longitudinal Data Systems.

Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) researchers visited 38 public high schools around the United States in 2007 and 2008 with the goal of validating and operationalizing a definition of college readiness. Schools in the sample were selected because they were demonstrating success at enabling more students from underrepresented groups to be ready for postsecondary education. This paper presents a qualitative summary of what researchers collected--programs, activities, practices, attitudes, and cultures of the schools visited. The results of the study include the identification of seven key principles underlying a comprehensive approach for promoting college readiness. In addition, the findings have resulted in the creation of an instrument, the CollegeCareerReady School Diagnostic, to measure school level college readiness over time and provide a detailed profile tied to actionable recommendations and resources. (Contains 3 footnotes, 3 tables, and 3 figures.)

Although public schools are usually the biggest item in state and local budgets, spending figures provided by public school officials and reported in the media often leave out major costs of education and thus understate what is actually spent. To document the phenomenon, this paper reviews district budgets and state records for the nation's five largest metro areas and the District of Columbia. It reveals that, on average, per-pupil spending in these areas is 44 percent higher than officially reported. Real spending per pupil ranges from a low of nearly $12,000 in the Phoenix area schools to a high of nearly $27,000 in the New York metro area. The gap between real and reported per-pupil spending ranges from a low of 23 percent in the Chicago area to a high of 90 percent in the Los Angeles metro region. To put public school spending in perspective, the author compares it to estimated total expenditures in local private schools. The author finds that, in the areas studied, public schools are spending 93 percent more than the estimated median private school. Citizens drastically underestimate current per-student spending and are misled by official figures. Taxpayers cannot make informed decisions about public school funding unless they know how much districts currently spend. This paper therefore presents model legislation that would bring transparency to school district budgets and enable citizens and legislators to hold the K-12 public education system accountable. Appendices include: (1) Notes on the Per-Pupil Spending Calculations; and (2) Financial Transparency in Education Act. (Contains 6 figures, 26 tables and 57 notes.)

This white paper examines the business case for environmental and sustainability (E&S) employee education and engagement. The "business case" is defined as both quantifiable measures of the business value for the sustainability program (e.g. money saved, energy use reduction, etc.) as well as less easily measurable assets such as reputation enhancement. Information in the white paper is primarily based on qualitative, anecdotal data and interviews, a review of company reports and Web sites as well as media articles, books and recent reports from Green Impact, ICF International (ICF) and MIT Sloan Management Review. The examples outlined in this white paper build on cases documented in "The Engaged Organization" report from Cisco, Clean Clothes, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Stonyfield and Walmart. Additional company case study examples from Baxter, Citigroup, Darden, eBay, IKEA, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Kimberly-Clark and Sodexo are also presented. Company Profiles is appended. (Contains 2 footnotes and 14 resources.) [Funding for this paper was provided by Kimberly-Clark.]

This paper examines a burgeoning network of organizations that is inventing new forms of community renewal and citizenship education. Their names vary--some call themselves public policy institutes, others centers for civic life--yet they share a common methodology, one aimed at tackling tough public issues, strengthening communities, and nurturing people's capacities to participate and make common cause. Today, there are more than 50 of these centers operating in almost every state in the union, most of them affiliated with institutions of higher learning. Except for a handful that are freestanding, the centers combine the best of what colleges and universities provide--civics courses, leadership development, service-learning programs, community-based research--with the kinds of hands-on, collaborative problem solving traditionally done by nongovernmental organizations. Because they operate at the intersection of the campus and the community, their impact extends to both: they nurture and sustain public life while at the same time enriching higher education. This paper surveys the state of the network today, how it has evolved over the years, and what it has achieved. It also looks at how the centers carry out their activities, the varying orientations and essential practices that define their work, and some of the challenges they face in coming years as they continue to deepen and expand their efforts.

The objective of this paper is to provide some practical insight into the process of implementing large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCT) in educational settings and to provide general recommendations for researchers conducting education-based RCTs in the future. The authors draw their recommendations from their recent experiences implementing RCTs in classroom settings for four Department of Education-funded evaluations. This paper highlights the complexity of, and the lessons learned from, implementing large-scale experimental evaluations in real world contexts.

Research led by the Consortium on Chicago Public School Research (University of Chicago) and the Center for Social Organization of Schools (Johns Hopkins University), has identified specific indicators--students' academic characteristics--that provide early signals that students are on a path toward dropping out of high school. Measured at different points in time, typically 6-9th grades, these indicators are used for a variety of purposes from identifying students in need of intervention to school and district accountability ratings. This Evidence-based Education Request summarizes ways that data are being used in schools, districts, and states, and by researchers to identify students at risk for not graduating and/or not achieving career and college readiness. Searches of Wilson Web, EBSCOHost, and the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) were performed to gather this information. To add to their findings, the researchers searched well-known papers on such indicators (e.g., Allensworth & Easton, 2007) as well as the websites of reform support and education research organizations known to do work in this area. Finally, they conducted a Google search in order to identify lesser-known sites using these indicators. Information in this paper is meant to be informative to schools, districts, and states interested in learning from others who are implementing indicators. The list of places implementing indicators is "non-exhaustive and does not represent all the ways indicators can be formulated or implemented." (Contains 4 footnotes.)

By 2025, 22 percent of the U.S. college-age population will be Latino, a level already exceeded in four states: California, Florida, New York, and Texas. However, today, only seven percent of Latinos ages 18 to 24 have an associate's degree or higher compared to 9 percent of African Americans, 16 percent of white, and 25 percent of Asians of the same age cohort. Given the importance of college degree completion for U.S. society and economic competitiveness, meeting the country's future human capital and workforce needs make it imperative to improve outcomes for Latino students. As public attention is focused on achievement gaps in education, educators and policymakers search for what they can do to improve education outcomes for Latino students. Finding the right solutions can be difficult. "Excelencia" in Education responds to this challenge by linking research, policy, and practice that supports higher educational achievement for Latino students. Premier in this effort is Examples of "Excelencia," a national initiative to systematically identify and honor programs and departments boosting Latino enrollment, performance and graduation. This compendium is a central component of the Examples of "Excelencia" initiative. By sharing best practices, the authors hope to prompt educators and policymakers to challenge the current state of Latino achievement in higher education and inspire them to work to increase Latino student success. All the programs profiled in this compendium are at the forefront of meeting the challenge of improving higher educational achievement for Latino students and the authors congratulate them for their current and continued efforts. (Contains 4 footnotes.) [This paper was compiled with the assistance of Estela Lopez and Maureen Skoloda. Additional funding for this paper was provided by Diverse Issues in Higher Education and Univision Communication. For the 2008 edition of this report, see ED540161.]

This paper describes a study that explored superintendent and school-board evaluations. Specifically, it looked at some of the methods and uses of boards' evaluations of superintendents and some of the needs and methods of boards' evaluation of themselves. Data for the study were collected from 188 surveys of selected school superintendents in Indiana, Illinois, and Texas. Following are some of the findings on superintendent evaluation: A total of 83.5 percent of the superintendents said they had a formal written evaluation by their school boards. In addition to those, 13 percent of the superintendents said that their boards evaluated them in writing. A total of 77.5 percent stated that the evaluation was done annually. Texas used the self-evaluation for a majority of its superintendents (74.6 percent), while 28.2 percent in Indiana and 36.2 percent in Illinois used such an instrument as part of the evaluation process. Following are some of the findings on board self-evaluation: Overall, 13.8 percent of the superintendents stated that their board evaluated itself formally every year. Only 22.9 percent of the boards asked the superintendent to assist in this evaluation process, and 18.6 percent used an outside consultant. (WFA)

The experiences of 10 states described in this paper illustrate how higher education can be a constructive force for change in the schools, and how the changes taking place in school-based curriculum and assessment provide valuable lessons for collegiate reform. The 10 states profiled are California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, and Wisconsin. The paper reviews current admission policies and practices in these states. Section 1 explains the need to clearly communicate to high school students expectations for college-level work to foster greater collegiate retention and graduation. Section 2 examines the need to strengthen the quality of the high school curriculum. Section 3 outlines the need to reduce remediation in postsecondary education. Section 4 explores the need to improve the levels of access and academic achievement of underrepresented students. Section 5 discusses the need to manage enrollment within constrained budgets and section 6 addresses the need to align high school student outcomes and college expectations. Appendixes contain more state-by-state detail and information on state officers who provided additional detail on their state's programs. Contains 25 references. (JB)

For decades, school finance reform in many states has been driven by (or reacted to) litigation arguing that schools need additional funding. In the 1970s and 80s, school finance cases prompted reforms to increase equity, equalizing dollars per pupil across districts. In the 1990s, the focus began shifting to educational outcomes, with a recognition that equal dollars do not always buy equal outcomes because some districts face higher costs than others. Thus, the courts, and resulting policies, have asked what dollar amount is sufficient, or "adequate", in any given district, to provide the level of educational quality that the state requires. This report provides an overview of the large literature that has developed to measure "adequacy", or the per-pupil cost of providing K-12 education in districts with varying characteristics, and the implications for the design of school finance systems. In general, the cost of an "adequate education" can be defined as the minimum amount of money that a school district must spend in order to achieve a targeted educational outcome, such as students achieving a particular score on state tests. Section I of this paper briefly reviews the methods used to measure the costs of adequacy. Section II discusses specific factors that may impact costs, with associated estimates of the size of marginal impacts, to the extent that there is research available, or notes when the literature is inconclusive. Section II also highlights how other states, particularly those most similar to California, address various cost factors in their funding systems. Section III moves to discussion of how states might structure their funding systems in order to pay for the costs of adequacy, again with a focus on the systems in states most similar to California. Section IV summarizes the implications for California.