Has the achievement of U.S. students improved over the past half century? Have gaps between racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups widened or narrowed? These and similar questions provoke near-constant conversation. But answers are uncertain, partly because research to date has yielded inconsistent findings. In this article, the authors bring…

The number of charter schools grew rapidly for a quarter-century after the first charter opened its doors in 1992. But since 2016, the rate of increase has slowed. Is the pause related to a decline in charter effectiveness? To find out, the authors tracked changes in student performance at charter and district schools on the National Assessment of…

Communities in Schools is one of the nation's oldest and largest providers of integrated student supports, also known as "wraparound services." Started in New York City in the 1970s, the agency now works with more than 2,300 schools in 25 states and the District of Columbia. The model is straightforward: Communities in Schools recruits,…

Since No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was enacted into federal law in 2002, states have been required to test students in grades 3 through 8 and again in high school to assess math and reading achievement. The federal law also asks states to establish the performance level students must reach on the exams in order to be identified as…

Since their start in Houston in 1994, KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter schools have been the most celebrated of the No Excuses schools. Employing strict discipline, an extended school day and year, and carefully selected teachers, No Excuses schools move disadvantaged students who start behind their peers academically up to and above…

The modernization of teacher evaluation systems, an increasingly common component of school reform efforts, promises to reveal new, systematic information about the performance of individual classroom teachers. Yet while states and districts race to design new systems, most discussion of how the information might be used has focused on traditional…

Since 1990 the New York-based Teach for America (TFA) program has placed more than 7,000 teachers in some of the nation's most challenging school districts. Most TFA recruits serve in schools that qualify for funding under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act due to their high concentrations of students living in poverty. These…