An important consideration in determining the validity of an observational assessment measure for young children is the variability attributed to the child versus that ascribed to the assessor or to some other factor such as classroom context. The "Teaching Strategies GOLD"® assessment system was used to elicit teacher ratings of a…

The need to adequately prepare all students for the next stage in their lives has led a number of states to adopt new educational standards that reflect the expectation that all high school students will be ready for college and career when they graduate. The report "Communicating College and Career Readiness through Proficiency…

School vouchers are the most contentious form of parental school choice. Vouchers provide government funds that parents can use to send their children to private schools of their choice. Here we examine the empirical question of whether or not a school voucher program in Washington, DC, affected achievement or the rate of high school graduation…

This paper presents a profile of District of Columbia's Going for the Gold Tiered Rate Reimbursement Systemp repared as part of the Child Care Quality Rating System (QRS) Assessment Study. The profile consists of several sections and their corresponding descriptions including: (1) Program Information; (2) Rating Details; (3) Quality Indicators for…

Just 19 months after the start of design, Stoddert Elementary School's modernized and expanded campus in northwest Washington, DC reopened, welcoming back the school and its community. Featuring spaces that had been missing since the school was founded in 1932, such as a gym, cafeteria, and library/media center and up-to-date building systems and…

Each week, nearly 11 million children under age 5 are in some type of child care setting for an average of 35 hours. Parents, as consumers of child care, equate a child care license with state approval--a gold seal for those businesses to which a state grants a license. Child Care Aware® of America reviews state licensing policies, which include…

This report collects the results of all available empirical studies using the best available scientific methods to measure how school vouchers affect academic outcomes for participants, and all available studies on how vouchers affect outcomes in public schools. Contrary to the widespread claim that vouchers do not benefit participants and hurt…

Objectives: To (1) test the use of capture-recapture methods to estimate the total number of child maltreatment deaths in a single state using information from death certificates, child welfare reports, child death review teams, and uniform crime reports; and to (2) compare these estimates to the number of maltreatment deaths identified through an…

Some scholars see it as a gold mine, others as a subject they wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. Either way, the chance to study the new federally financed school voucher program in the nation's capital has piqued the interest of education researchers around the country. Spelled out in detail in the D.C. School Choice Incentive Act of 2003--part…

In "The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools" (Brookings, 2002), the authors and their colleagues reported that attending a private school had no discernible impact, positive or negative, on the test scores of non-African-American students participating in school voucher programs in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Dayton, Ohio.…