Public Impact

Assessment, Evaluation, and Data

Improving Reading Outcomes—New Column from NC Early Childhood Foundation

In Friday’s EdNC.org., Mandy Ableidinger asks, “The most recent NC end of third grade reading assessment results show scores hardly shifting from last year and continued racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic gaps. What can we do differently?” Referring to our recent report, Closing Achievement Gaps in Diverse Schools: An Action Guide for District Leaders, Ableidinger, the […]

Brookings-AIR Study Finds Large Academic Gains in Opportunity Culture

Students in classrooms of team teachers led by “multi-classroom leaders” showed sizeable academic gains, according to a new study from the American Institutes for Research and the Brookings Institution. The team teachers were, on average, at the 50th percentile in the student learning gains they produced before joining a team led by a multi-classroom leader. […]

Report: Trends, Possible Improvements in School Quality Rating Systems

A new review of 25 school quality rating systems by Public Impact’s Lyria Boast and Tim Field for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools revealed clear trends that may help rating system designers and users think about optimal system designs.

The rating systems inventoried included some from state departments of education, large public school districts, charter associations and authorizers, and private news and advocacy organizations. Among the trends they found among the systems were:

  • the inclusion of student growth, useful for evaluating a school’s quality based on its students’ progress–a new standard, the authors say, for quality rating systems.
  • the expansion of college- and career-readiness measures–going beyond graduation rates to include important, new indicators.
  • an exploration of new ways to focus attention on the lowest-performing students–as the authors say, “great schools are great for all students in the building.”
  • an interest in valid measures of student engagement–although systems focus on academic outcomes, some try to capture school culture as well.
  • simplified reporting formats to categorize school quality.
  • an increase in data transparency and public accessibility–so that a rating system can be judged not just by its accuracy, but by how available its data is to users.