The COVID-19 pandemic has redoubled attention to the challenges families face in making sure their children are fully prepared and supported in their journey through school. This first of three Quality Counts 2021 installments provides grades and scores for the nation and each state on a range of factors setting students up for success in school…

As the 2020-21 school year opens amid the COVID-19 pandemic's disruption, this third and final installment of Quality Counts 2020 delivers a data-driven portrait of the nation's school system along with A-F grades and rankings for each state on a wide range of academic, school finance, and socioeconomic indicators. This report also includes an…

Stagnation or promise? The third and final installment of "Quality Counts 2019" offers evidence for both in an annual summing up of the nation's K-12 system. The Education Week Research Center analyzed dozens of factors ranging from the academic to the socioeconomic in coming up with its all-inclusive state rankings and A-F grades. The…

The first round of this year's high-school-match notifications in New York City's massive, district-wide school choice process went out to students this month, sparking celebration, consternation, and a renewal of concerns about unequal access to the city's best schools. The Big Apple's school-matching system is certainly on a New York scale, with…

As the common core is brought to life in classrooms this year, some English/language arts teachers are finding themselves caught in a swirl of debate about whether the new standards require them to cut back on prized pieces of the literary canon to make room for nonfiction. A recent spate of news reports has ignited a new wave of anxiety about the…

Results from new state tests in Kentucky--the first in the nation explicitly tied to the Common Core State Standards--show that the share of students scoring "proficient" or better in reading and math dropped by roughly a third or more in both elementary and middle school the first year the tests were given. Kentucky in 2010 was the…

A new neuroscience twist on a classic psychology study offers some clues to what makes one student able to buckle down for hours of homework before a test while his classmates party. The study published in the September 2011 edition of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science," suggests environmental cues may "hijack" the brain's mechanisms…

Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter middle schools enroll a significantly higher proportion of African-American students than the local school districts they draw from, but 40 percent of the black males they enroll leave between grades 6 and 8, says a new nationwide study by researchers at Western Michigan University. With 99 charter schools…

The most rigorous experimental study of performance-based teacher compensation ever conducted in the United States shows that a nationally watched bonus-pay system had no overall impact on student achievement--results that are certain to set off a firestorm of debate. The study, known as POINT for the Project on Incentives in Teaching, was a…

New York City's charter schools are making strides in closing achievement gaps between disadvantaged inner-city students and their better-off suburban counterparts, a new study concludes. The study, conducted by Stanford University researcher Caroline M. Hoxby and her co-authors Sonali Mararka and Jenny Kang, is based on eight years of data for…

Many educators and parents would agree that it is important for parents to spend time in their children's classrooms, to closely monitor homework, or to read to children at home. Try telling that, though, to a 13-year-old, argues Harvard University researcher Nancy E. Hill. In a series of studies and a new book, Hill makes the case that both…

Educators and policymakers increasingly recognize that in middle school, a combination of strong academic preparation, close monitoring, and good support is pivotal to success in high school. But few middle schools have structured themselves so explicitly to deliver the double wallop of academic and counseling attention needed to get their…

Some school districts hoping to improve communication and student engagement in learning are taking a step many educators still view warily: providing students with their own e-mail accounts. However, making e-mail a regular part of students' school lives raises a host of concerns about inappropriate use. In addition, many teachers doubt that the…

Amid stepped-up school accountability pressures under the No Child Left Behind Act, many teachers appear to be adjusting how they do their jobs. However, principals and district leaders are not necessarily in control of those instructional changes, a new study concludes. Using data collected through surveys of math teachers, principals, and…

When the mayor and public school officials in the District of Columbia unveiled plans last month for converting Washington's middle and elementary schools to a pre-K-8 model, system leaders seemed confident the change would be good for students. After all, the school system has plenty of company. Since the late 1990s, districts in a growing number…