Passed in 1999, the Public Schools Accountability Act (PSAA) established a results-based accountability system in California with specific performance targets for schools. The PSAA created a system of rewards and sanctions for meeting or not meeting those targets, and established assistance programs for low-performing schools. In 2001, the High…

This report presents the results from a seven-month study of successful schools in California performed by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). It explored some of the concepts underlying the "successful schools" approach to defining education adequacy and considered their implications for analyzing educational adequacy in California. The…

In June of 1998, Proposition 227 was passed by 61 percent of the California electorate. The initiative was intended to significantly alter the ways in which the state's English learners (ELs) are taught. Proposition 227 requires that ELs be taught "overwhelmingly in English" through sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) programs during "a…

Over the past decade, the standards-based reform movement in education has focused attention on the responsibility of schools and school systems to produce results in student learning. Nationally this focus is most evident with the implementation of accountability provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. However, even…

Because of the limitations of the traditional approaches to classifying a child's characteristics, a number of authors have proposed to describe children on the basis of a defined set of functional skills or abilities rather than by etiological or deficit category (Bailey et al. (1993); Holt (1957); Linden (1963)). Building on this earlier work,…

In June of 1998, Proposition 227 was passed by 61 percent of the California electorate. Intended to change how the state's English learners (ELs) are instructed, Proposition 227 required that ELs be taught "overwhelmingly in English" through sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) programs during a transition period and then transferred to…