Research conducted at The Leadership and Learning Center on the “90/90/90 Schools” has been particularly instructive in the evaluation of the use of standards and assessment. The 90/90/90 research includes four years of test data (1995 through 1998) with students in a variety of school settings, from elementary through high school.  Our analysis considered data from more than 130,000 students in 228 buildings.  The school locations included inner-city urban schools, suburban schools, and rural schools.  The student populations ranged from schools whose populations were overwhelmingly poor and/or minority to schools that were largely Anglo and/or economically advantaged.

Parents and policy-makers have a direct agenda when it comes to accountability. Their questions must be addressed with clarity and candor.

The difference between the student who earns A’s and B’s and the one who earns D’s and F’s is not necessarily a matter of work ethic, organization, high-school preparation, or class attendance. The difference is the professor’s grading policy.

If you do one thing different in your district to improve children’s performance, teach more nonfiction reading.

Even those who subscribe to the “punishment” theory of grading might want to reconsider the way they use zeros, Mr. Reeves suggests.

While studies link cooperative learning with higher achievement, defining the term and implementing the concept is a challenge.

When you are sorting through competing theories and multiple sources of data, take Einstein’s advice: Make everything ‘as simple as possible, but not simpler’

When linking teacher pay to student achievement, the devil is in the details. Be aware of potentially explosive issues when exploring a performance pay policy for your district

If school officials remain fixated on test scores as the ultimate measure of accountability, they will miss the big picture of what schools can accomplish.

As this Wisconsin high school shows, improvement and reform can happen without new money, staff changes, or outside programs. All you need is hard work and collaboration at every level.

Making decisions based on data is a popular trend, but make sure the facts are real and not simply strongly held opinions masquerading as reality.

Budget cuts are forcing writing out of the classroom, but it remains the foundation of strong literacy and achievement.  Is it a focus in your district?

Board members must separate fact from fiction when trying to figure out the real expectations their community has for the school district and from public education as a whole.

Evaluting your superintendent is important, but rankings are often ambiguous or politicized. How can you make superintendent assessments a valuable tool for change?

Although Social Security funds are in decline and no solution is evident, few politicians have the temerity to try to change the system. Why? Because Social Security is the third rail in politics: if you touch it, you’ll die. The field of education has an issue that is equally as lethal: grading.…

Who could possibly be against teaching social responsibility? Quite a few people, it turns out—as anyone who survived the controversy in the 1980s and early 1990s over outcomes-based education (OBE) can attest. A look back at that abandoned effort offers three lessons for those who advocate teaching values and civic virtue.

There's no doubt that Web 2.0—the social and technological phenomenon that enables users to generate content, interact, and share information across borders—can be a force for good in the world of education…

You need to make data-driven decisions!” intoned the workshop leader.  I doubt that any of the teachers and administrators in the audience intended to make “ignorance-driven” decisions. In fact, few school leaders are experiencing a shortage of data.

As education leaders strive to promote excellence for all students, they confront sharply contrasting schools of thought about the best way to close achievement gaps between students of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds…

To motivate students to come to class, many schools have implemented tough attendance policies, typically stipulating that students will receive no credit for homework or tests that they miss because of unexcused absences. The problem is that these get-tough mandates are counterproductive and do little to reduce tardiness and truancy…

While the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is stalled in Congress, school leaders have a perfect opportunity to seize the initiative. Without waiting for permission from any governmental authority, we can create new models of educational accountability that are more constructive and meaningful than those now in place…

It's not hard to find examples of short-term success in high-poverty schools. Such cases have been documented in the recent work of Chenoweth (2007) and in my own studies of 90/90/90 schools™—those with 90 percent poverty, 90 percent minority enrollment, and 90 percent of students meeting or exceeding academic standards (Reeves, 2004).  Earlier studies by Edmonds (1979), Carter (1999), and Haycock (1999) also identified schools that were succeeding despite the fact that they enrolled large numbers of students in poverty…

teacher leadership is a concept that extends far beyond a slogan and has become an integral part of education reform. It is no coincidence that award-winning school districts have made teacher leadership a key part of their strategies for continued success…

Several weeks ago, I traveled to rural Zambia to dedicate a school that my colleagues and I had built there.1 Amidst the celebration of a facility that will serve more than 550 students in grades 1–9, I learned some leadership lessons…

Leaders set priorities. With multiple demands on limited school resources and classroom time, an essential job of every school leader is allocating resources to produce the greatest student success. In some schools—often those serving large proportions of poor and minority students—the imperative to raise test scores in literacy and math has led administrators to sacrifice seemingly nonrelated subjects, such as music and art…

Consider the following laments that I have heard recently from school leaders: “We can't change the grading policy—it's part of our culture.” “Public displays of data won't work here—the culture won't allow it.” “The parents just don't understand—you can't change the culture by passing a law.” Each of these statements includes the word culture, but the meaning of the term ranges from policies and procedures to personal preferences to deeply embedded belief systems…

School leaders are often held accountable for things beyond their control.  The skills that students bring to kindergarten; the education attainment of families in the community; the local tax base; the pool of available teacher candidates—all these factors affect student achievement.  Because complaining about things outside our control is an ineffective leadership strategy, it is more productive to focus on the key factors that we can directly influence.

Financially, times are still tough for many public schools. Responding with these five steps can help school boards withstand the hard times and even strengthen their districts

Turn back the clock 100 years. As a superintendent in the early years of the 20th century, you must deal with the latest technological innovation, the No. 2 pencil. How will you respond?

President Bush’s education reform package, “No Child Left Behind,” passed the Senate last month and was signed into law by President Bush.  The bill contains a $4 billion increase in education funding, a 12-year student achievement goal, no private school vouchers, targeted funding to poor districts, and more funding flexibility for state and local districts…

Will the recently released draft of K-12 standards from the Common Core State Standards Initiative provide a degree of coherence in academic expectations for students, teachers, and education systems that has not previously been available in American education? Or will this effort be one more failed reform, distinguished more by enthusiastic presentation than by successful implementation? The answer depends not merely on the standards documents, but also on the degree to which policymakers and leaders are willing to link the clear intent of the standards to the reality of the classroom.

There is a resurgence of interest for national academic standards,the common sense notion that at least in fields such as reading and mathematics, students across the land ought to have similar expectations and tests.  After all, the idea of common curriculum and assessments has previously transcended not only state boundaries but national borders.  The Cambridge International Examinations are used in more than 100 nations, and curricula from Canada, Great Britain and the United States are widely used around the world. What could possibly go wrong with national standards?

As he surveyed the heavens, Galileo made careful observations and challenged the prevailing hypothesis that the earth was the center of the universe.  But this same scientist, so careful in his observations, also came to conclusions about the tides that were, by today’s standards, laughably wrong.  That the scientific method can be both illuminating and wrong, even when practiced by a distinguished researcher, is a cautionary tale for educators, school leaders, and policymakers…

School board members are caught in the middle of one of the most intense political and personal debates in recent decades: the debate over standards and assessment. The argument is characterized by extremes, with state policymakers uniformly demanding high standards at the same time that increasingly militant teachers are criticizing high-stakes assessments and demanding more autonomy in the classroom…