Education Secretary Duncan is outlining priorities for the "Race to the Top" Fund. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, states must offer assurances that they are making progress in adopting rigorous standards; recruiting and retaining effective teachers where they are needed most; turning around low-performing schools; and building data systems to track student achievement and teacher effectiveness.

As Congress considers how to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act—set to expire in September—many organizations and agencies are weighing in on its successes and shortcomings. This article, by Children’s Advocate writer Kelly Virella, lays out the differing arguments in several areas.

According to the Council of the Great City Schools' annual Beating the Odds report, fourth and eighth graders are doing better in reading and math, both on state standardized tests and the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). The report compared test scores from 2002 through 2005 in 66 urban districts. While urban school achievement remains below national averages in math, the percentage of fourth and eighth graders in these schools who scored at or above proficient levels has risen each year since 2002. Reading achievement is also improving in urban schools, particularly among fourth graders: 54.4 percent of urban fourth graders scored at or above proficient level in reading, up more than 11 percentage points from 2002. In addition, race-based achievement gaps appear to be narrowing in reading and math.

How can we decide what is essential to teach when we have too many standards? How can we be sure our standards really define what kids should know? How can we keep kids engaged? These are three of the six major questions this Web site answers in order to make standards-based schools effective. The site, from Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL), offers case studies and strategies to help align curriculum and teaching with standards.

As the number of schools that fail to meet improvement goals under the No Child Left Behind law rises, so does the number of students who qualify for transfers to better-performing schools. But those provisions of the federal school improvement law are proving difficult to implement, and even harder to assess. Jim Daniels looks at NCLB transfers in the real world of schools, students and parents.

The Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA), a special project of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, began assessing performance at the district level in 10 urban districts in 2002 with reading and writing assessments of fourth- and eighth-grade reading and mathematics. During the last two years, seven of the 10 districts posted larger gains than their peers nationwide in fourth-grade reading; eight districts posted larger gains than their peers nationwide in fourth-grade math; and, in eighth-grade, the percentage of students with basic math skills has increased in seven districts more than it has across the nation. In many of the systems, minority students are outperforming their peers elsewhere.

CFK reports from: The Sumner School
Event: A briefing on the Condition of Education 2005
Organized by: The National Center for Education Statistics
Where/When: Washington, D.C, June 1, 2005

On June 1, 2005, The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), held a briefing to release its annual collection of education statistics, The Condition of Education 2005. Grover J. Whitehurst, the Director of Institute of Education Sciences, and Acting Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics presented the report, which is mandated by congress and is due June 1, of every year.

With new attention and resources going into addressing the achievement gaps between different ethnic and racial groups, a new effort to measure the academic performance of American Indian and Alaska Native students is particularly timely. Rob Capriccioso reports.

Based on data analyses, interviews, and site visits in six states and eleven school districts, the Harvard Civil Rights Project reports that educators are struggling to implement No Child Left Behind, but unintended consequences in federal accountability rules have derailed state reforms and assessment strategies. NCLB's test-based accountability policies do not reward schools that have made progress and punish schools serving large numbers of low-income and minority students. The supplemental educational services mandated by NCLB force poorly performing schools to improve individual student achievement only for those requesting services.

The Citizens for Effective Schools group is calling on Congress to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Act without the stiff penalties for schools that fail to measure up. In an open letter addressed to President Bush and Education Secretary Rod Paige, the group said that the law should focus less on punishing schools that fall short and more on prescribing specific steps that could help them improve.