The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, like other state education agencies and school districts, recognizes that the quality of instruction is a key lever to turning around low-performing schools. As part of annual monitoring of state-designated low-performing schools, the department's external monitors observe…

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, like other state education agencies and school districts, recognizes that the quality of instruction is a key lever to turning around low-performing schools. As part of annual monitoring of low-performing schools, the department uses Teachstone's Classroom Assessment Scoring…

Identifying schools that are beating the odds--schools that are exceeding academic performance expectations, given the composition of their student body--can lead to promising practices that other schools serving similar populations can implement. Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast & Islands used data on high-poverty high schools in…

Motivated by the need to improve teaching and learning and by federal priorities reflected in requirements for grant programs such as Race to the Top and the Teacher Incentive Fund, many states are developing teacher evaluation systems that include measures of individual teachers' contributions to their students' learning growth. One way to…