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.

Like never before, today's classroom teachers routinely are being asked to collaboratively analyze student data, develop or implement new mandated curricula, and assess the effectiveness of these innovations. Ironically, few preservice preparatory or in-service professional development programs actively train classroom instructors in the use of team-based inquiry or collaborative data- driven problem solving. Framed within the context of the literature and governmental efforts to achieve school reform, this article describes one such in-service program, in practice at public and charter schools in high-need communities in New York City. The Inquiry Based School Improvement Program (IBSIP) was created and designed to help schools serving high-need communities in New York City engage in the types of team-based inquiry and data-driven problem solving needed to meet the everchanging institutional demands on these schools to improve.

The title of this presentation at the Washington DC Emetrics summit was: Creating a Data Driven Web Decision Making Culture - Lessons, Tips, Insights from a Practitioner. Although meant for corporations, the advice applies just as well to academic institutions. The goal here was to share tips and insights that might help companies move from just having lots and lots of data to creating cultures where decisions are made not on gut-feel, or the proverbial seat of the pants, but rather based on data.

Overall SAT scores remained flat this year amid continued but slowing growth in the number of high school seniors taking the widely used college-entrance exam, according to a report released today by the College Board, the New York City-based nonprofit organization that owns the exam.

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.

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?

Philadelphia School District Superintendent Arlene Ackerman yesterday unveiled a new accountability system that will go far beyond standardized test scores to determine how well each school and region is performing. Ackerman is the former county superintendent of schools in San Francisco.

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.

Many friendships and emotional connections arise among teachers. These are important, but they do not substitute for necessary professional support and growth. Teachers must have structured time to share, write, and talk about their teaching and their students. Otherwise, teaching is a solitary activity, all too often leading to unsatisfactory results for both teachers and students. A school with a healthy professional learning community will maintain a razor-sharp focus on student achievement; its faculty will feel a common ownership and responsibility for that achievement; and its students will achieve success.

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.

Looking closely together at student work can unveil a treasure trove of insights to guide school communities as they reflect on their purpose, assess their progress, and plan strategies for reaching all children better. It's scary work, though, and respectful protocols can help.

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:

This site is for district STAR coordinators. The site was developed and is maintained by Educational Testing Service (ETS) under contract with the California Department of Education (CDE). The CDE has contracted with ETS for the development, administration, scoring, and reporting of the California Standards Tests, the California Modified Assessment, the California Alternate Performance Assessment, and the Standards-based Tests in Spanish.

The California Standards Tests (CSTs) are designed to match the state's rigorous academic content standards for each grade. Grades 2 through 8 tests cover mathematics and English/language arts (which includes writing in grades 4 and 7). Grades 9 through 11 cover English/language arts, mathematics, and science. History-social science tests are added for grades 8, 10 and 11 as well as science for grade 5. Except for writing, the questions are multiple-choice.

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.

Continuous Improvement: It takes more than test scores. Analyzing state assessment results is only the beginning of effective data-driven decision making. There is no question that the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001 has impacted schools in at least two ways: First and foremost, NCLB has made the use of data to improve student achievement imperative; and second, NCLB has increased the need for continuous improvement processes within schools. Summative data just the beginning

Seventh-graders who take algebra are ahead of the game but can throw off attempts to use state test results to judge their schools' performance. Most students don't take Algebra 1 until eighth or ninth grade, but a few school districts offer it to a significant number of seventh-graders. So the results released earlier this month on state math tests can be misleading, districts such as Murrieta Unified point out.

A record number of students took the college admissions test, of which 40% were minorities. In California, 5% more students than last year took the SAT.

Analyzing your data is a process in which you will want to involve your entire staff. Good data-driven dialogue keads to data-driven decisions. If you engage staff in an ongoing data dialogue, it is much more likely that you will feel ownership for the data-based decisions you collectively make.