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The primary purpose of the pro­active schoolwide discipline plan is to create a positive, safe, supportive, and welcoming environment for all students and staff. Once this environment is established, teachers and educators are in a stronger position to provide instruction.

In a move that could prompt major changes in the way states measure the achievement of English-language learners, the U.S. Department of Education is planning to tell states they must each use a consistent yardstick in determining when a child is fluent in English and when that child no longer needs special ELL services.

Imagine the research possibilities if every student in the country carried a "virtual backpack" stuffed with statistics on his or her entire educational history. The data, traveling with students as they moved from school to school, could be used to update parents on their children's learning progress, register students in school, or import information when they moved to a new city or entered college.

One of the current buzzwords in use in the state of California and across the nation is multiple measures. But what does this phrase really mean for students, teachers, schools, and districts? Quite simply by multiple measures we mean the use of a variety of assessment formats that allow educators to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their students so that the curriculum can be adjusted to meet the needs of those students.

Using Data to Improve Schools: What's Working is an easy-to-read guide to using data to drive school improvement. School system leaders and their staffs can learn from this book how to build a districtwide culture of inquiry that values the use of data for sound decision-making. School board members, parents and community members interested in helping improve schools will find tools for their work as well in this guide. It describes the challenges and the successes of educators from districts both large and small committed to using data.

It's not as easy as it looks to determine which schools are doing better than others. Two different criteria are relevant: is the difference in performance between two schools large enough to matter, which is sometimes termed educational significance or practical significance; and is the difference in performance between two schools real, or could it just be due to chance, which is typically described as statistical significance. Ideally, we are interested in differences that are both practically and statistically significant. But a difference could be large, but not statistically significant (which is often the case when we have a small sample of information about performance), or statistically significant, but very small (in which we are pretty sure that the difference is real, but it's just not very important). (Yes, statistical significance does matter!)

Our goal as educators should be to veer from an equal learning experience toward an equitable learning experience. Our job is to make sure all students have a fair, and possibly unequal, learning experience. Ensuring that each student has a fair opportunity to succeed means that one student's path may look very different from another's.

Developed in collaboration with technology leader Northrop Grumman, ASCD's new software-based ASPIRE Assessment System will provide educators with customized classroom formative assessments they can use throughout the year to get more timely and useful feedback on student learning.

Nine strategies help raise the achievement of students living in poverty. Students from families with little formal education often learn rules about how to speak, behave, and acquire knowledge that conflict with how learning happens in school. They also often come to school with less background knowledge and fewer family supports. Formal schooling, therefore, may present challenges to students living in poverty. Teachers need to recognize these challenges and help students overcome them. In my work consulting with schools that serve a large population of students living in poverty, I have found nine interventions particularly helpful in raising achievement for low-income students.

Assessment validity refers to the accuracy of a score-based inference about a test taker's status. This definition sounds pretty highbrow, but it really isn't. Educators are interested in getting a fix on students' knowledge and skills so they can make sensible instructional decisions about those students. But teachers can't tell how much a particular student knows merely by looking at the student. That's because students' cognitive skills and knowledge are covert. Accordingly, we test students so we can use their overt responses to the test to make an inference about what's covert. Tests aren't valid or invalid; inferences are.

Demystify that data! A powerful asset to data driven inquiry and improvement, Data Wise comes out of a work group of Boston Public School leaders and Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty and doctoral students and is informed by the development of a data system now used by all Boston Public Schools. Data Wise guides schools and school systems through the growth of comprehensive data systems that encompass classroom work samples as well as standardized tests.

The Pivot tables and chartsfeature in Excel lets educators begin disaggregating and analyzing data within seconds (literally) of receiving original data files from state departments, testing companies, and/or school districts. These ten tutorials show how to use what is perhaps the most powerful data analysis tool within Excel

During the last 65 years, ASCD publications have charted the education profession's perennial quest to design and use assessments wisely. ASCD and its members have consistently urged clarity about the purposes of evaluation and advocated the use of assessments that are appropriate for their specific purposes. A thread that runs through six decades of writing about assessment is the belief that assessments should answer two questions: How are we doing? How can we do it better?

From the Annenberg Institute. Using Data for Decisions. A study of four leading-edge districts suggests what it might take to create a system that provides useful information about early signals of progress toward academic achievement.

Districts use new methods to learn what works best for kids
No longer is it viewed as acceptable for teachers to deliver lectures, administer grades and expect their students to simply try harder. Teachers are increasingly being asked to use assessments and collect data on student learning to gauge whether their methods are succeeding and what more needs to be done.

Did your students' test scores rise last year? If you're like many of our Principal Files team members, you've witnessed an increase in scores over the past several years. Seldom is it by chance that those scores have risen; it's the result of a concerted effort by an entire staff -- an effort that is very likely to include extensive data analysis, focused teacher training, frequent monitoring of student progress, practice testing throughout the year, student and staff incentives, and other strategies.

Free Tech Literacy Assessment tool for students in grades K-12, specifically geared toward middle schoolers. who are required to be technology literate by 8th grade.

The 2008 California Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program test results for schools, counties, districts, and the state are available at this site. Test results are reported for the six components of the STAR Program:

The state's public school students improved in reading, writing and mathematics this year, marking five years of near-steady growth on the tough California Standards Test, results released Thursday show.