J. Lorence, A. Dworkin, Laurence A. Toenjes, Antwanette N. Hill
{"title":"Grade Retention and Social Promotion in Texas 1994-99: An Assessment of Academic Achievement among Elementary School Students","authors":"J. Lorence, A. Dworkin, Laurence A. Toenjes, Antwanette N. Hill","doi":"10.1353/PEP.2002.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PEP.2002.0014","url":null,"abstract":"To make schools more accountable for the performance of students, many school districts as well as entire states have proposed more rigorous standards to help ensure that pupils have the basic skills necessary to be successful in school. Many public and private sector decisionmakers have criticized the common practice of social promotion; that is, allowing students to progress to the next grade level without having already learned the material required for the current grade. The public in general views the practice of social promotion or grade placement as detrimental to low-performing students who are promoted without requisite skills because such students are presumed to fall further behind their more academically proficient classmates. Consequently, some states and school districts have proposed or adopted strict policies of retention that require a low-achieving student to remain in the same grade until meeting a specified level of proficiency.1 Although these newer standards for promotion may vary across","PeriodicalId":9272,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Education Policy","volume":"8 1","pages":"13 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86282799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Standards and Accountability in Washington State","authors":"P. Hill, Robin J. Lake","doi":"10.1353/PEP.2002.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PEP.2002.0009","url":null,"abstract":"In the early 1990s, Washington State was in the vanguard of the standards movement. Democratic governor Booth Gardner and leaders of the Washington Roundtable?a coalition of business leaders? agreed to press for a comprehensive statewide education reform package modeled after Kentucky's. David Hornbeck, who drafted the Kentucky con sent decree that started the standards-based reform movement, advised on drafting of the state's reform bill. An omnibus reform package was passed in early 1993. By 1994, the National Business Roundtable rated Washington as one of four states that had enacted the most complete standards-based reform program. Washington political and business leaders intended to transform public education from a bureaucracy controlled by mandates and enforced compli ance into a performance-based system. They envisioned standards-based reform as a rational approach to improving public education. They sought to set standards that define what children need to know and be able to do, develop measurement systems to test performance against those standards, help schools find and use methods of instruction effective enough to allow them to meet the standards, give schools the freedom of action necessary to adjust their methods of instruction to meet student needs, and reward schools that meet standards and punish those that do not. Like proponents of standards-based reform in other states, Washington State policy and business leaders assumed that establishment of a perfor mance-based system would change the behavior of teachers, parents, school administrators, and students.1 Teachers and parents, informed by the stan 199","PeriodicalId":9272,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Education Policy","volume":"27 1","pages":"199 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81156207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Accountability and Support in Chicago: Consequences for Students","authors":"G. Hess","doi":"10.1353/PEP.2002.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PEP.2002.0008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9272,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Education Policy","volume":"12 1","pages":"339 - 387"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82029331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"School Accountability in California: An Early Evaluation","authors":"J. Betts, A. Danenberg","doi":"10.1353/PEP.2002.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PEP.2002.0001","url":null,"abstract":"We assess the three main components of California’s recently adopted school accountability program. First, new content standards are highly specific and comprehensive. Second, the state has introduced a new norm-referenced statewide test, is phasing in criterion-referenced tests aligned with the content standards, and has introduced a high school exit exam which the graduation class of 2004 must pass. Third, California has implemented a complex series of rewards and punishments for school staff and students, including financial rewards to schools and teachers at schools that improve markedly, and scholarships to students who excel on the state test or Advanced Placement or equivalent tests. Notably, many of the financial incentives are aimed particularly at schools that initially rank poorly in student achievement. However, it is too soon to know how these incentives will affect both average student performance and inequality in student performance in California in the long run. We analyze recent trends in both the level and distribution of test scores and of school resources. We find that average student achievement in California has risen markedly over a three-year period. Schools that initially had the lowest test scores appear to have improved the most, although some of this could result from growing student and teacher familiarity with the state test. We find evidence that some of this improvement merely reflects volatility in test scores and “regression to the mean,” but alternative methods confirm that inequality in student achievement in California is falling. Trends in school resources are less reassuring. We find little evidence that the high school curriculum is being diluted by the new emphasis on preparing for tests. However, overall in California, teacher education, experience, and credentials have fallen over the three-year period since the accountability reforms began. More troubling, schools that originally scored in the bottom fifth in student achievement have experienced a far greater decline in teacher preparation than have schools originally in the top fifth of student achievement. We hypothesize that teachers’ concerns about the sanctions that await bottom-performing schools that fail to improve may have contributed to these adverse patterns in teacher mobility. Consequently, the state may have to redouble its efforts to improve teacher preparation and overall resources at schools with low achievement.","PeriodicalId":9272,"journal":{"name":"Brookings Papers on Education Policy","volume":"14 1","pages":"123 - 197"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79921883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}