Every year, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics releases an annual report, America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being. AIR subject matter experts have identified some interesting findings from several indicators in the 2019 report’s education domain and explain why they matter. ...
NAEP results are Rorschach Tests for policy wonks—a golden chance for free-association policy speculation. Small fluctuations in average scores on NAEP give rise to big explanations. Forget the quibbling over tiny differences in test scores; it’s time to rebuild schools on evidence-based, comprehensive policies that have been shown to work ...
The persistent achievement gap between Black and White students has frustrated educators, parents, and policymakers for decades. In this blog post, Sami Kitmitto and George Bohrnstedt discuss a recent AIR study for the National Center for Education Statistics that highlights the potentially detrimental effect of school segregation. ...
In a rare occurrence, PISA, TIMSS, and NAEP assessments are releasing science and math results in the same year. Chances are the results from the various assessments won’t all tell the same story. So what do you need to know to make sense of this bumper crop of assessments? In ...
Parents, teachers, schools, districts, states, and especially students all want schools that prepare graduates to thrive in the 21st century. In this blog post, Anne Mishkind asks what it means to be "college and career ready."
NAEP's own data shows different rates among college seniors who are proficient vs. those who are ready for college. Until achievement results for 12th grade students with a good dose of Common-Core-based education under their belts become available, says Fran Stancavage in this blog post, educators who set NAEP standards ...
New research is again highlighting the wide variation in states’ student performance standards and overly optimistic reports of student proficiency. Alicia Garcia argues that, going forward, states must adopt evidence-based methods of standard setting that prepare students to compete in the global marketplace. ...
In this blog post, Peter Cookson says it's time to address the idea of educational rights, asserting that the arc of justice needs to bend in the direction of a universal, free public school system where excellence is distributed not by zip code, skin color, or socio-economic status but as ...
A study released today by AIR and the Institute of Education Sciences shows that even small amounts of the right kind of feedback to teachers and principals can have an effect on student achievement in math. As Andrew Wayne explains in this blog post, the findings are important for states ...
In his final State of the Union address, President Obama said, “We live in a time of extraordinary change… and whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.” In this blog post, AIR’s Peter Cookson says the key to dealing with this change is ...