Publications
This analysis examines the performance of the U.S. K–12 education system over time, in comparison to other nations, and at different levels of organizational structure: states, school districts, and schools. It also reviews performance in terms of four societal outcomes: effectiveness, equity, efficiency, and participation.
Keyworth, R., States, J. & Detrich, R. (2013). Feedback at the System Level: Benchmarking U.S. Education Performance. In Performance Feedback: Using Data to Improve Educator Performance (Vol. 3, pp. 1-76). Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute.
Data Mining
Presentations
This paper examines the issues, challenges, and opportunities of creating a school culture that uses data systematically in all of its decision making.
Keyworth, R. (2009). Building a Data-based Decision Making Culture through Performance Management [Powerpoint Slides]. Retrieved from 2008-aba-presentation-randy-keyworth.
This paper examines the importance of performance feedback systems at all levels of school, staff and student outcomes to achieve desired results over time.
Keyworth, R. (2011). Performance Feedback: Use It or Lose It [Powerpoint Slides]. Retrieved from 2011-aba-presentation-randy-keyworth.
This report presents selected findings from the school principal data files of the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). It provides the following descriptive information on school principals by school type, student characteristics, and other relevant categories: number, race/ethnicity, age, gender, college degrees, salary, hours worked, focus of work, years experience, and tenure at current school.
Battle, D. (2009). Characteristics of Public, Private, and Bureau of Indian Education Elementary and Secondary School Principals in the United States: Results From the 2007–08 Schools and Staf ng Survey (NCES 2009-323). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC.
This special issue of Strategies is devoted to highlighting this knowledge base and corresponding practices. In this issue you will find an in-depth case study of a school district engaged in systemic improvement, using the principles and practices of what Dr. Jackson calls the Pedagogy of Confidence®.
Destination: Equity. (2015). Strategies, 17(1) . Retrieved from https://www.aasa.org/uploadedFiles/Resources/Other_Resources/STRATEGIES-SEPT-15-FINAL.pdf
The main purpose of this research is to explore whether the proper strategies to deal with cultural diversity in school is being implemented, and to assess how cultural diversity is addressed in our school.
Aguado, T., Ballesteros, B., & Malik, B. (2003). Cultural diversity and school equity. A model to evaluate and develop educational practices in multicultural education contexts. Equity &Excellence in Education, 36(1), 50-63.
This analysis examines whether the current mechanisms for providing federal education funding to disadvantaged children are effective and whether the system works as originally intended.
Aud, S. L. (2007). A Closer Look at Title I: Making Education for the Disadvantaged More Student-Centered. Heritage Special Report. SR-15. Heritage Foundation.
This report explores some of the most financially disadvantaged school districts in the country and identifies a typology of conditions that have created or reinforced their disadvantage. It report lays out a typology of conditions that lead to severe fiscal disadvantage for local public school systems. It then provides examples of states, state policy conditions, and specific local public school districts identified as being severely financially disadvantaged.
Baker, B. (2014). America's Most Financially Disadvantaged School Districts and How They Got That Way. Washington: Center for American Progress.
This report begins by identifying those states where combined state and local revenues are systematically lower in higher-poverty districts–that is, states with “regressive” school funding distributions. Based on this analysis, the authors focus on six states–Illinois, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and North Carolina–where children attending school in higher-poverty districts still have substantially less access to state and local revenue than children attending school in lower-poverty districts. With these states in mind, the authors then go beyond recent reports on school funding inequities to uncover some nontraditional causes of these imbalances.
Baker, B. D., & Corcoran, S. P. (2012). The Stealth Inequities of School Funding: How State and Local School Finance Systems Perpetuate Inequitable Student Spending. Center for American Progress.
The National Report Card is a critique of state school funding systems and the extent to which these systems ensure equality of educational opportunity for all children, regardless of background, family income, place of residence or school. The report makes the assumption that "fair" school funding is defined as "a state finance system that ensures equal educational opportunity by providing a sufficient level of funding distributed to districts within the state to account for additional needs generated by student poverty."
Baker, B. D., Sciarra, D. G., & Farrie, D. (2010). Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card. Education Law Center.
The Second Edition of the National Report Card on public school funding, Is School Funding Fair?, shows that far too many states continue to deny public schools the essential resources they need to meet the needs of the nation's 53 million students and to boost academic achievement. The National Report Card rates the 50 states on the basis of four "fairness indicators" - funding level, funding distribution, state fiscal effort, and public school coverage. The Report provides the most in-depth analysis to date of state education finance systems and school funding fairness across the nation.
Baker, B. D., Sciarra, D. G., & Farrie, D. (2012). Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card: Second Edition. Education Law Center.
The 3rd Edition of Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card details how the Great Recession and its aftermath have affected school funding in the states. The National Report Card (NRC) examines each state's level of commitment to equal educational opportunity, regardless of a student's background, family income, or where she or he attends school. Providing fair school funding -- at a sufficient level with additional funds to meet needs generated by poverty -- is crucial if all students are to be afforded the opportunity to learn and be successful.
Baker, B. D., Sciarra, D. G., & Farrie, D. (2014). Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card: Third Edition. Education Law Center.
This report analyzes the disparity in funding and resources in K-12 education for children of color and low-income families. It found that millions of students–largely low-income students and students of color–continue to attend segregated and economically isolated schools. State and district school finance systems perpetuate and compound these inequities by providing less money to students with the greatest need.
Baker, B., & Corcoran, S. (2012). The stealth inequities of school funding. Center for American Progress, Washington, DC.
This research reports on the cost of teacher turnover in five school districts. It reports the rate of turnover, the relationship between turnover and teacher and school characteristics, and the costs associated with recruiting, hiring, and training replacement teachers.
Barnes, G., Crowe, E., & Schaefer, B. (2007). The Cost of Teacher Turnover in Five School Districts: A Pilot Study. National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.
The Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary School Principals in the United States is a subsection of the NCES 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). It provides descriptive statistics on K-12 school principals in areas such as: race, gender, education level, salary, experience, and working conditions.
Bitterman, A., Goldring, R., Gray, L., Broughman, S. (2014).Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary and Secondary School Principals in the United States:Results From the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Summary, First Look. IES, National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education
This report analyzes two critical, and sometimes competing, issues in school finance reformer: fiscal equity and fiscal efficiency. It makes the case that fiscal equity and fiscal effectiveness are not mutually exclusive, and this nation needs to do more to improve both the fairness and the productivity of public school dollars. In other words, we need to make sure that schools and districts not only get enough money to serve their student populations but also that they then spend those dollars wisely.
Boser, U. (2014). Educational Equity and Effectiveness- The Need for Fiscal Fairness and Fiscal Productivity. Washington: Center for American Progress.
Although many factors combine to make a successful school, most people agree that quality teachers and school principals are among the most important requirements for success, especially when success is defined by the ability of the school to raise the achievement of its students. The central question for this study is how the quality of the teachers and principals in high-poverty schools in North Carolina compares to that in the schools serving more advantaged students.
Clotfelter, C., Ladd, H. F., Vigdor, J., & Wheeler, J. (2006). High-poverty schools and the distribution of teachers and principals. NCL Rev., 85, 1345.
The authors developed a multi-faceted prejudice habit-breaking intervention to produce long-term reductions in implicit race bias. The intervention is based on the premise that implicit bias is like a habit that can be broken through a combination of awareness of implicit bias, concern about the effects of that bias, and the application of strategies to reduce bias.
Devine, P. G., Forscher, P. S., Austin, A. J., & Cox, W. T. (2012). Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A prejudice habit-breaking intervention. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(6), 1267–1278.
This paper provides a guide to statistically based methods for estimating the extra costs of educating disadvantaged students, shows how these methods are related, and compares state aid programs that account for these costs in different ways. It shows that large, urban school districts with a high concentration of disadvantaged students would receive far more aid (and rich suburban districts would receive far less aid) if statistically based pupil weights were used instead of the ad hoc weights in existing state aid programs.
Duncombe, W., & Yinger, J. (2005). How much more does a disadvantaged student cost?. Economics of Education Review, 24(5), 513-532.
This report examines the widespread and unjust district budgeting practices and offers Congress a straightforward legislative path: Fix the so-called comparability provisions of Title I.
Hall, D., & Ushomirsky, N. (2010). Close the Hidden Funding Gaps in Our Schools. K-12 Policy. Education Trust.
The goal of this paper was to study twin districts and use the data culled to provide recommendations for how districts can best leverage their school funding investments–in other words, achieve a bigger bang for their educational buck. The findings were: When it comes to education, spending does not always equal results. There are significant funding inequities between demographically similar districts. Districts have limited control over their own expenditures.
Hanna R., Morris B. (2014). Parallel Lives, Different Outcomes: A Twin Study of Academic Productivity in U.S. School Districts. Washington: Center for American Progress.
This report from the Study of School-Level Expenditures presents findings on how state and local education expenditures at the school level vary within school districts.
Heuer, R., & Stullich, S. (2011). Comparability of State and Local Expenditures among Schools within Districts: A Report from the Study of School-Level Expenditures. Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, US Department of Education.
This analysis examines the performance of the U.S. K–12 education system over time, in comparison to other nations, and at different levels of organizational structure: states, school districts, and schools. It also reviews performance in terms of four societal outcomes: effectiveness, equity, efficiency, and participation.
Keyworth, R., States, J. & Detrich, R. (2013). Feedback at the System Level: Benchmarking U.S. Education Performance. In Performance Feedback: Using Data to Improve Educator Performance (Vol. 3, pp. 1-76). Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute.
The National Teacher and Principal Survey is completed every four years soliciting descriptive information from principals and teachers across the 50 states. A few highlights include: Sixty percent of school principals have been at their schools for three years or less.
Taie, S., and Goldring, R. (2017). Characteristics of Public Elementary and Secondary School Principals in the United States: Results From the 2015–16 National Teacher and Principal Survey First Look (NCES 2017-070). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved [date] from https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2017070.
The US Government Accountability Office has recently released a new report evaluating the disproportionality in discipline in K-12 grades. The racial and gender gap persists in spite of efforts to remediate. African-American youth, boys, and individuals with disabilities are more likely to receive any type of discipline than are individuals in our sub-groups than would be predicted on the basis of their percentage of the population. In this evaluation, the disproportionality existed even though economic level of the student was controlled for. Previously, it had been argued that the disproportionality was a function of poverty rather than race and gender. This study challenges that argument. These data highlight that as a society we still have a great deal of work to do to overcome racial and gender biases in this country.
United States Governmental Accountability Office (2018). K-12 education: A guide for schools (GAO publication-18-258). Retrieved from https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-258
This research looked at test score gaps for a range of populations: between boys and girls; between black, white, and Hispanic children; between the children and the mother’s education; between children in poor and nonpoor families; and the gaps between high-poverty and low-poverty schools. They wanted to know whether gaps grow faster during summer or the school year. They were unable to answer this question as the results were inconclusive. Although, von Hippel and Hamrock did find the total gap in performance from kindergarten to eighth grade, is substantially smaller than the gap that exists at the time children enter school. The conclusion is that gaps happen mostly in the first five years of life. study suggests students who are behind peers at the time they enter kindergarten should receive early remedial instruction as the most efficacious way to improve overall performance.
von Hippel, P. T., & Hamrock, C. (2019). Do test score gaps grow before, during, or between the school years? Measurement artifacts and what we can know in spite of them. Sociological Science, 6, 43-80.