Content Listing

Commentary

2.20.2025

Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Make room, test scores: Introducing “indicators of high school and middle school readiness”

David Griffith, Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Our latest study pilots a new measure of a school’s quality: its contribution to students’ grade point averages at their next school. It sends a clear message to educators that one of their core missions is to help their graduates succeed in their next step—not just in reading and math, but in all subjects—and not just on tests, but on the stuff that tests struggle to capture.

Commentary

2.20.2025

Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Mind the honesty gap

Dale Chu

A new report from the Collaborative for Student Success aims to refocus attention on the “honesty gap” in the wake of the latest (and disastrous) NAEP results.

Commentary

2.20.2025

Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A bold state move to improve reading

Emily Freitag

When I started teaching in Louisiana in 2004, I was told that the state was expanding annual assessments of students to all grades 3–8 because Louisiana ranked forty-ninth in the country for reading proficiency. I started to hear a gutting phrase that I’ve since learned is common across the southeast, “the only state behind us is Mississippi. Thank goodness for Mississippi.”

Commentary

2.20.2025

Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The state of pandemic learning loss recovery

Jeff Murray

The third iteration of the Education Recovery Scorecard, compiled by Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research, was released hot on the heels of 2024 NAEP test scores and is an

Commentary

2.20.2025

Cheers and Jeers: February 20, 2025

The Education Gadfly

Cheers

Commentary

2.20.2025

What we’re reading this week: February 20, 2025

The Education Gadfly

“The bad new bipartisan consensus behind falling test scores.” —Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring A Massachusetts high school’s partnership with a trade union provides students with hands-on experience and pathways to union apprenticeships, addressing the skilled labor shortage while promoting inclusivity

Report

2.20.2025

Ready or Not? A New Way to Measure Elementary and Middle School Quality

Jing Liu, Ph.D., Seth Gershenson, Ph.D., Max Anthenelli

Everyone knows that standardized tests paint an incomplete picture of schools’ impacts on students. Yet the search for alternative indicators of school quality has been a disappointment. Might a new measure based on students' GPA's hold promise?