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Coherence is the core principle underlying standards-based educational reforms. Assessments aligned with content standards are designed to guide instruction and raise achievement. The authors investigate the coherence of standards-based reform's key instruments using the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum. Analyzing 138 standards-assessment pairs spread across grades and the three No Child Left Behind tested subjects, the authors find that roughly half of standards content is tested on the corresponding test and roughly half of test content corresponds to the standards. A moderate proportion of test content is at the wrong level of cognitive demand as compared to the corresponding standards, and vice versa. Between 17% and 27% of content on a typical test covers topics not mentioned in the corresponding standards. Policy and research implications are discussed.

Charter school quality varies substantially from state to state, school to school. Nevertheless, the charter approach continues to hold promise as a potent catalyst for innovation, including empowering parents and teachers and catalyzing district school reform. At its core, strategic management for charter schools involves achieving alignment among three core elements: the mission, operations, and stakeholder support. When these elements are aligned, charter schools can achieve greatness. Unfortunately, most organizations-charters are no exception-operate in a state of misalignment due to conflicts over mission, inadequate capacity, lack of support, or some combination of the three.

This paper describes an experiment designed to investigate the impact of aligning student, parent, and teacher incentives on student achievement. On outcomes for which incentives were provided, there were large treatment effects. Students in treatment schools mastered more than one standard deviation more math objectives than control students, and their parents attended almost twice as many parent-teacher conferences. In contrast, on related outcomes that were not incentivized (e.g. standardized test scores, parental engagement), we observe both positive and negative effects. We argue that these facts are consistent with a moral hazard model with multiple tasks, though other explanations are possible.

Evidence (and evidence-based reform) are entirely neutral on the nature of teaching. Whatever works is what is valued. The distinction between teaching driven by accountability and teaching informed by evidence is crucial. Using test scores to evaluate teachers and schools, at least as defined by NCLB, runs the risk of focusing teachers on a narrow band of reading and math skills, and school and district leaders often try to improve performance by "alignment," trying to get teachers to spend more time on the skills and knowledge likely to be assessed. In contrast, evidence-based policies have no such limitations.

The foundations-idea complex has also set its sights on remaking another of the key institutions of our democracy-the public school-in its own managerial image. There's no other way to account for the distorted, counter-empirical shape of the American debate over education. The overarching trends are plain enough: As wealth inequality swells, so do the coffers of private foundations, even as the recession has caused government budgets to shrink. As long as the motives of government and foundations are aligned, that's not necessarily a problem. But the funders of education reform seek nothing less than the wholesale retooling of public schools, at a time when the nation's school budgets are stretched to the breaking point. And the writing on the chalkboard grows clearer by the minute: Their market-based educational reforms don't work.

In the last decade, we have emerged from the Education Stone Age. No longer must we rely on primitive tools like teachers and principals to assess children's academic progress. Thanks to the best education minds in Washington, Albany and Lower Manhattan, we now have finely calibrated state tests aligned with the highest academic standards. What follows is a look back at New York's long march to a new age of accountability.

What would happen if one of the wealthiest men in the world decided to remake the institution of public education in America? What if that man believed he understood the secrets to success, and sought to align the nation's schools to his vision and methods? What if he decided to devote all his time and considerable money to this objective? Could he succeed? We are in the process of finding out just how far money and a sharply defined agenda can take you.

Consider us optimists, but we think the high-stakes test movement has reached its apex and started its decline. It won't happen quickly given the powerful political forces aligned to promote the testing regime, but the test obsessed "accountability" package for education reform won't continue indefinitely. There are too many bad policies (NCLB, Race to the Top), bad performance reports (NAEP, CREDO, last week's Mathematica study), and corruption/cheating/score inflation scandals (ATL, DC, NY, and more). If you need hope, look back at how Diane Ravitch drove an intellectual stake into the heart of the education reform movement on the Daily Show. She asked the audience how they felt about tests. When the crowd booed, Jon Stewart complained that it couldn't be that simple. Tell that to Michelle Rhee now that her reforms have faced the scrutiny of the voting public (in the DC Mayoral race but again this past Tuesday). In a democracy, eventually, the people have their say.

So a teacher can be effective in each of the sub-components and developing overall? How is that possible? You have a problem Sir. And it goes without saying that it will be as difficult for our best teachers to be in the Highly Effective Range, EVER, as it is for our smartest fourth graders to achieve a 4 on the State ELA test. Which we're working on, by the way. We want more 4′s and more 3′s and well, even without the TESTS, we aim to do a better job, aligning to the common core, making data driven decisions, doing all of the things well that you've asked us to do. Believe it or not, we do want every child to succeed and we understand we've got to be more deliberate in making that happen through the common core curriculum and data analysis, NOT through fear and intimidation. Not through the composite scores you're instituting. Two things will happen. One, I'll have to hire three more administrators to help me with all of the teacher improvement plans indicated by your scoring bands. Two, our teachers will be demoralized, defeated, and ready to give up. We get it Commissioner King. We are going to transform this district from the wonderful, productive place that it already is into a more focused PK-12 continuum of curriculum that positively affects student achievement in big ways. And we're also going to be sure that while productive, we don't suck all of the joy out of learning. Your insanely punitive scoring bands are not going to help make that happen. Raise expectations, think the best of us, help us to get there. Reward us when we do. The scoring bands and the publicly reported composite scores will not help us get there.

This September at New York City's Rockefeller Center, NBC put on its second annual Education Nation conference-a series of events and broadcasts bankrolled by the corporate interests and foundations aligned with the so-called "education reform" movement. On September 27, the second day of the conference, FAIR convened our own discussion of education and corporate media coverage at New York's School of the Future. The panel, moderated by journalist Laura Flanders, featured former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch, NYU education professor Pedro Noguera, parent/activist Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters and New York City public schoolteacher Brian Jones. Here are excerpts from the discussion

"This week a film partially funded by Walden Media, which is owned by entrepreneur and conservative Philip Anschutz, will be released in theaters. The film, Won't Back Down, is a work of fiction but claims to be based on real life events and tells the story of a teacher and a parent in a 'failing' school who join forces to 'save their school.' Walden Media also funded Waiting for Superman, which was billed as a documentary on education and chronicled the stories of several families navigating the educational landscape intermixed with commentary from journalists, economists, philanthropists, and business folks who surmised the troubles of public education today. These two films differ in style, but their substance is aligned and their conclusion is the same: teacher unions are the obstacle to student achievement."

"According to labor journalist Micah Uetricht, it's high time for trade unions in the United States to decide whether they want to wither away and follow a "business unionism" model of concessions and shrinkage, or follow "social movement unionism," a bottom-up, democratic organizing strategy that is aligned with social justice movements throughout the country."

"The idea that teachers have the summer off is something of a myth. I recently spent a few days with several thousand teachers -- not at the beach, but at TEACH, the AFT's largest gathering of educators focused on their professional practice and growth. Teachers spent long days learning from fellow educators and other experts about concrete ways to improve teaching and learning. Many teachers told me how they were spending the rest of their summer: writing curriculum aligned to the new, challenging Common Core State Standards; taking classes, because teachers are lifelong learners; and working with students -- in enrichment camps and in programs to stem summer learning loss. So much for the dog days of August. But our conferees did much more. We also committed to reclaim the promise -- the promise of public education. Not as it is today or as it was in the past, but as what public education can be to fulfill our collective obligation to help all children succeed."

"New scores from standardized tests   aligned with the Common Core State Standards were released earlier this month in New York, and, as expected, the number of students who did well plummeted. This decline was predicted by New York State officials. How did they know? Here to explain in an eye-opening piece is award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York, who has for more than a year chronicled on the test-driven reform in her state"

"Here is the reason for the collapse of test scores in New York City and New York State. State officials decided that New York test scores should be aligned with the achievement levels of the federally-administered National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)."

"One of the undercurrents fueling concerns about the Common Core is the relentless focus on preparation for "college and career." Education has always had dual aspirations - to elevate mind and spirit, through the investigation of big ideas, and the pursuit of fine arts and literature, and the service of the economic needs of individuals and society. What we are feeling in our modern culture is the absolute hegemony of commercial aims, as if every activity that does not produce profit is under assault. And in our classrooms there is a parallel assault on activities that do not "prepare for college and career," which has been redefined, in practical terms, as preparation for the tests that have been determined to be aligned with that goal. Preparation for college and career has begun to feel more and more like "preparation to make yourself useful to future corporate employers.""

"If the mission of the education system is to serve the economy, and that means maximizing profits, then those profits will be highest if we have an overabundance of college graduates to do the technical work that must be done to keep the machinery of production running. And we have low wage service sector that is unable to raise its wages because they are unorganized and have no political clout. Those who are unemployed are informed over and over again by the school system that they are inadequate because they cannot pass the tests, and therefore to perceive their status as being the result of their own failure to make themselves useful to employers. They are unemployed not because manufacturing has been outsourced to cheap labor overseas, but because they were not "career ready," as proven by their failure to pass the new, much more "rigorous" Common Core aligned tests. Education reform becomes an exercise in rationalizing the shift of half the nation's workers into "surplus" status. It creates a new meritocracy, based on a false paradigm that defines the ability to do well on tests as merit."

"Since the standards were first introduced, Common Core supporters have created amorphous platitudes and spin to market it. Even as more Americans like me "wise up," do not expect the Common Core-ites to give up. Think tanks have received millions from Gates to support it and education companies are making millions on new Core-aligned materials. There is big money being spent - and big money to be made - in the Common Core. So, expect that when the happy bus pulls into your town, you will hear the same old arguments. These arguments, which I call the Four Flimflams of the Common Core, go like this:"

"If the former DC schools Chancellor, Michelle Rhee intends to reform education, the last people she would be aligning herself with would be governors Scott Walker and Tom Corbett, right? Yet that is exactly who she will be speaking along side at The American Federation for Children Annual Policy Conference, Monday May 9th, in Washington D.C."

After years of work and more than $250 million in federal support, nearly all states and many districts have established longitudinal student data systems for accountability, yet many of those systems, even within the same state, still can't talk to each other, nor easily provide data to answer daily instructional questions from educators and policymakers. The Austin, Texas-based Michael and Susan Dell Foundation is hoping its new Ed-Fi data standard, released this morning, will allow educators and researchers to access information on kindergarten through 12th grade from state and local systems even before the systems have been aligned.