Back to the drawing board? Students and parents tested out three versions of a financial aid “shopping sheet,” and none of the options received much fanfare. (National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, h/t Inside Higher Ed)

Playing catch-up. If a student is considered off-track in eighth grade to be college- or career-ready by graduation, the chances of making enough gContinue Reading »

“My manicurist requires a license to do my nails, but our nation isn’t sure we should license teachers.” Camilla Benbow in an excerpt from John Chubb’s new book, The Best Teachers in the World. (Defining Ideas)*

More Chicago woes. District leaders are working to identify as many as 100 schools eligible for closure. (The Atlantic)

Preparing high-schoolers for life. At least 4Continue Reading »

Last week California Governor Jerry Brown signed a new law directing the state superintendent to add graduation rates and measures of college- and career-readiness into its school accountability system, the Academic Performance Index (API). This is a big deal for the country—California will now join a handful of states that consider more than just test results and graduation rates in high schooContinue Reading »

The Obama Administration has granted waivers from No Child Left Behind to 33 states and the District of Columbia in return for adopting college- and career-ready standards, creating new accountability systems, and implementing teacher and principal evaluation and support systems*. The Department defines “college- and career-ready standards” as:

…content standards for kindergarten throughContinue Reading »

Accountable for student achievement. Principals in Los Angeles Unified School District will now be evaluated, in part, on student performance. (District Dossier/Education Week)

Gauging college and career readiness. Wisconsin’s state superintendent of instruction wants the state to pay for all 11th-graders to take the ACT, as well as a career skills test, so officials can see if students Continue Reading »

This guest blog post is written by Jordan Horowitz, Vice President, Foundation Relations and Project Development at the Institute for Evidence-Based Change (IEBC) – a California-based initiative that collects, analyzes, and shares student data in order to track performance and improve success from elementary school through university.

In Ready by Design, Bill Tucker and Anne HyslopContinue Reading »

“Nearly a third of local schools rank high statewide: Scores based on standardized testing.”

The headlines say it all. Last week, California’s Department of Education released its annual public school rankings based on the 2011 Base Academic Performance Index (API) scores. For over a decade, California’s schools have been evaluated on the API’s 200-1,000 point scale, each strivinContinue Reading »

Confession: I’m a sucker for a good infographic. And today, the Strategic Data Project at Harvard (part of the Center for Education Policy Research) released three(!). As Caralee Adams reported in College Bound, the project has developed a set of performance indicators for school districts and high schools – indicators that provide insight into how well they do in preparing and sending their grContinue Reading »

It’s no Super Bowl, but this weekend’s Masters golf coverage featured a few exciting, innovative ads of its own. And this time they weren’t for Chrysler, M&Ms, or Doritos. It seems Exxon Mobil, one of the event’s three major corporate sponsors, chose to use its ad time to promote its education agenda: the National Math and Science Initiative, the Common Core State Standards, and, for good mContinue Reading »