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Eric.ed.gov – Fiscal Year 2008 U.S. Department of Education Budget Summary and Background Information

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Five years ago the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) launched a revolution in our education system by insisting that all students should be proficient in reading and math by 2014 and demanding comprehensive reforms to reach this national goal, including strong assessment and accountability systems, a highly qualified teacher in every classroom, more choices for students and parents, a new emphasis on school improvement, and the use of research-based instructional practices. Under NCLB, States and local school districts have made strides in putting these reforms in place, and the first returns are promising. The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that we have reversed a decade of stagnation in student achievement, with scores rising significantly in both reading and math in the… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Catalyst Schools Research Study: Technical Report

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In January 2012, the West Virginia Governor’s Office released an influential report, “Education Efficiency Audit of West Virginia’s Primary and Secondary Education System,” written by Public Works (2012), a management consulting company headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Based largely on this report, the West Virginia Legislature passed education reform legislation, which was signed into law by the Governor in spring 2013. The Catalyst School Research Study examined the initial stage of an initiative that grew out of that reform. The Transforming Professional Learning initiative focused on changing the way the West Virginia Board of Education (WVBE) defined professional learning and the ways major providers involved themselves in the professional learning of educators in the state, especially the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) and regional education service… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Funding a Better Education: Conclusions from the First Three Years of Student-Based Budgeting in Hartford

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: When the Connecticut State Department of Education published its first district report cards in 2003, it was obvious that the Hartford Public Schools district was struggling. Fewer than half of its students were proficient on the state reading exam. Math performance was better, but 63 percent of 10th-graders and 43 percent of younger students failed to meet proficiency benchmarks. Compared with the state, Hartford looked even worse; its proficiency rates trailed by as many as 39 percentage points. The arrival of Steven Adamowski as district superintendent in 2006 began a new chapter at Hartford Public Schools (HPS). Within months, Adamowski introduced a plan to improve the quality of a Hartford education. The first pillar was school choice, allowing students’ families to choose the schools their children would… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Money and Freedom: The Impact of California’s School Finance Reform on Academic Achievement and the Composition of District Spending. Technical Report. Getting Down to Facts II

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: California’s recent major school finance reform, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), attempts to address resource inequity by reallocating school finances on the basis of student disadvantage (rather than district property wealth) and relinquishing many of the restrictions on how revenue can be spent. Beyond a uniform “base grant” given to all districts, the LCFF reallocates additional district revenues based almost entirely on the proportion of disadvantaged students (e.g., low-income, limited English proficiency) in each district. We show LCFF significantly increased per-pupil spending, and the state now has among the most progressive funding formulas in the country. This study is among the first to provide evidence of LCFF’s impacts on student outcomes. For cohorts born between 1990 and 2000, we constructed a school-by-cohort-level panel data set of… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Do Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education than Rich Kids? Evaluating School Privatization Proposals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. EPI Briefing Paper #375

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: During the past year, Wisconsin state legislators debated a series of bills aimed at closing low-performing public schools and replacing them with privately run charter schools. These proposals were particularly targeted at Milwaukee, the state’s largest and poorest school district. Ultimately, the only legislation enacted was a bill that modestly increases school reporting requirements, without stipulating consequences for low performance. Nevertheless, the more ambitious proposals will likely remain at the core of Wisconsin’s debates over education policy, and legislative leaders have made clear their desire to revisit them in next year’s session. To help inform these deliberations, this report addresses the most comprehensive set of reforms put forward in the 2013-2014 legislative session. Backers of these reforms are particularly enamored of a new type of charter school… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – The Next Chapter of Education Funding in Massachusetts. White Paper No. 199

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: As state leaders consider needed updates to the Commonwealth’s school funding formula, they should remember just how well the approach taken by Tom Birmingham, former Massachusetts state Senate president, and co-author of the 1993 Education Reform Act worked. Beginning in 1993, Massachusetts’ SAT scores rose for 13 consecutive years. The state’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shot up, too. By 2005, Massachusetts students became the first to score best in the nation in all four major NAEP categories (fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math). Since then, they have repeated the feat on every subsequent administration of NAEP except one. While American students as a whole lag behind their international peers, the 2007 and 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study results showed… Continue Reading