Strengthening our nation’s schools first requires an awareness of how students are performing academically. Fortunately, the number of Web sites offering tools to analyze student data has grown considerably since NCLB was enacted. The resources below provide information about content standards and academic proficiency, and a snapshot of how students are doing at the state and national level.
Achieve, Inc. provides a wealth of information on state profiles, content standards, graduation requirements, and performance benchmarks, as well as publications about states’ abilities to “measure up” to NCLB requirements.
Like its parent organization, Achieve, Inc., Align to Achieve is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization providing educators, parents, and others with tools to analyze and understand achievement data. Its academic standards e-library and standards database allow users to search exemplary standards by state for a specific content area.
The Annenberg Institute works in collaboration with education reform organizations, school districts, school improvement networks, and education funds to develop the capacity of urban communities to build and sustain programs and policies that improve teaching and learning. The Institute’s Web site offers a variety of resources for school improvement-related work.
This U.S. Department of Education site provides application information for a federal program designed to recognize schools that are significantly improving their students’ achievement in reading and/or mathematics. The site also has a list of the schools that have received the award, along with their applications and a summary of the strategies that the schools thought were critical to their success.
The Center’s mission is to assist schools and districts engaged in comprehensive school reform and improvement by providing reliable information about research-based strategies and assistance. This Web site provides comprehensive “how to” information for schools planning, implementing, or sustaining whole-school reform.
CER creates opportunities for and challenges obstacles to better education in America’s communities.
This is the federal government’s site for the current CSR program. The CSR program is designed to increase student achievement by assisting public schools across the country with implementing comprehensive reforms that are grounded in scientifically based research and effective practices.
Select “standards” from the pull-down menu on this “K–12 Issues” page of ECS’ Web site to review quick facts about state standards, research about standards and accountability systems, and links to additional relevant resources. ECS also links to Align to Achieve’s standards database, as well as other databases containing information about state standards and curriculum frameworks for various content areas.
Ed Trust provides extensive materials on state and local educational initiatives, federal and state policy, professional development, and various data tools. In the section entitled, “ESEA/No Child Left Behind (NCLB),” users will find information about schools’ and districts’ abilities to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements, teacher quality, and realizing the achievement goals of NCLB.
IES is the research branch of the U.S. Department of Education, dedicated to advancing knowledge and student achievement by providing resources and information about the efficacy of evaluated educational interventions.
This database of PreK–12 content standards was designed for curriculum developers and teachers involved in standards development or revision. Synthesizing more than 100 documents about standards developed by professional educational organizations, this 4th edition compendium includes 14 academic content areas for grades PreK through high school. Users can click on “search the database” for information about specific standards and related classroom activities, or browse lesson plans and other products.
NCREST, established at Teachers College in 1990, provides information supportive of school improvement efforts by documenting successful initiatives, creating reform networks to share new research findings with practitioners, and linking policy to practice.
The Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) and Public Agenda collaborated to facilitate community dialogues around the United States on the topic of academic standards. In addition to providing free online videos of the group forums, this Web site includes a list of policy briefs and reports serving as executive summaries of the discussions in PDF format.
"Pathways" synthesizes research, policy, and best practices on issues critical to educators engaged in school improvement. Specific issues addressed on this Web site include assessment, at-risk students, equity in mathematics and science, instruction, leadership, literacy, policy, professional development, and technology.
This national program aims to enhance children’s reading/literacy by increasing funding to states to implement scientifically-based instruction in reading. Reading First supports work to improve instructional programs, assessment tools, professional development, and leadership.
Supported by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences (IES) 10 national RELs work to strengthen education by partnering with all stakeholders in a given geographical area.
In conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education, American Institutes for Research, the Campbell Collaboration, and a growing umbrella of research organizations, the WWC assesses the evidence about educational interventions and disseminates findings from the most rigorous studies conducted.