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This report offers political advice to school superintendents. The authors draw solely on a collection of anecdotes from superintendents of large urban districts to offer a narrative replete with maxims, aphorisms, and pithy advice. Superintending is, in their view, a continuous string of almost unavoidable conflicts, so the reader is led through internal groups (central office, school board, unions, teachers and principals) and external groups (foundations, businesses and state politicians) and advised on how to cultivate support and deal with opponents. There is no research design, literature review, or systematic data collection. The report relies heavily on the authors' experiences, yet neither author appears to have worked in a K-12 district or served as a superintendent. Moreover, the advice that follows is often contrary to contemporary professional practices. The report improperly generalizes from more politicized large urban districts and does not consider how the favored approaches may limit vision, flexibility and effectiveness. In the end, the report perpetuates antiquated methods and does not advance our knowledge.

Research-Based Options for Education Policymaking is a collection of mini-briefs that takes up important policy issues and identifies policies supported by research. Each mini-brief focuses on a different issue, and its recommendations for policymakers are based on the latest scholarship. At a time of growing national recognition of the need for a policy shift to more successful approaches to school reform, this collection of mini-briefs identifies affirmative, research-based approaches to reform in areas including school choice, portfolio district reform, and teacher deprofessionalization. Mini-briefs in this series are: Regulating Charter Schools; The Effectiveness of Class Size Reduction; Does Money Matter?; The Purpose of Education: Truing the Balance Wheel; Housing Policy; Five Simple Steps to Reading Policy Research; Reading Qualitative Educational Policy Research; Do Choice Policies Segregate Schools?; The "Portfolio" Approach to School District Governance; Reversing the Deprofessionalization of Teaching; School Accountability, Multiple Measures and Inspectorates in a Post-NCLB World.

This report offers recommendations for building community support for federal school turnaround approaches, particularly in communities that oppose these approaches. Parents, the report concludes, want improvement but cherish their local schools and distrust the turnaround options mandated from above by higher levels of government. Thus, community members rise up in anger when their school faces closure, conversion to a charter school, breaking up, or forced replacement of staff. Arguing that this resistance is due in large part to parents not understanding how bad their schools are, the report proposes that by engaging the public constructively and using eight communication strategies, parents will react more positively towards imposed turnaround approaches. The report does not address the body of research that shows school turnarounds to be generally unsuccessful. Further, even though parents in the study raise concerns that their schools are under-resourced and face significant social problems, the report fails to address these issues. By diverting attention from the real problems correctly identified by the parents and by possibly disrupting ongoing reforms, this communication strategy holds little promise for actually improving education and could prove harmful.

Although the federal government claims otherwise, Race to the Top is not research based. Rather, its foundation is in ideology and belief-based realism. The overall effort is fundamentally antiscientific and distracts valuable and needed attention, resources, and focus from the nation's real problems of social, economic, and educational deprivation.

The Obama administration advocates for education standards designed to make all high school graduates "college- and career-ready." To achieve this end, the administration is exerting pressure on states to adopt content standards, known as the "common core," being developed by the National Governors' Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (NGA/CCSSO). The administration has, for example, called for federal Title I aid to be withheld from states that do not adopt these or comparable standards. To date, 48 states are at least tentatively participating in the standards effort, thus suggesting that the result might become de facto national standards. Standards advocates argue that common standards are necessary for keeping the nation competitive in a global economy. But this brief points out that research does not support this oft-expressed rationale. No studies support a true causal relationship between national standards and economic competitiveness, and at the most superficial level we know that nations with centralized standards generally tend to perform no better (or worse) on international tests than those without. Further, research shows that national economic competitiveness is influenced far more by economic decisions than by test scores.

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have called for national "common core" curriculum standards. Some have argued that national standards are essential for reform, as they provide coherence, rigor, logic and organization. Others have contended they will narrow the curriculum, seize control from local districts and states, and distort the purposes of education. The Cato Institute's Neal McCluskey argues that national standards will have only limited, if any, effect. The report contends there is only a weak theoretical case in favor of national standards and that the structure of schooling might be the real problem. It concludes that market models are the best way to reform education. While providing a useful summary and critique of the research on national standards, the non-sequitur in the report (standards do not work; therefore the free market will) presents readers with a conclusion not supported by the report's evidence. Thus, the fundamental policy conclusions are not sustained.

Across the nation, the final stage of school restructuring is being reached by an inexorably increasing number of schools. Under the No Child Left Behind law, if a school does not make its adequate yearly progress targets after four previous years of being "in need of improvement," it must implement a fundamental restructuring plan. The restructuring options are as follows: (1) turn the school operations over to the state, (2) turn the operations over to a private company, (3) reopen as a charter school, or (4) reconstitute the school by replacing some or all of the teachers, staff and administrators. There is a fifth alternative of applying "any other" fundamental school restructuring, an option now receiving new attention. It is essential that we know how these restructuring options work in practice -- particularly as the law is now due for reauthorization. This brief reviews the independent research on the ultimate sanctions and provides recommendations designed to enhance school improvement.

This report examines the controversies surrounding the implementation of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and the proposals to improve it. The report concludes that AYP is fundamentally flawed and the author recommends that it be suspended until its merits can be confirmed or refuted by scientific evidence. The report is available at: http://epsl.asu.edu/epru/documents/EPSL-0609-212-EPRU.pdf

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaced the No Child Left Behind Act with great fanfare and enthusiasm. Granting more power to states and curbing what was seen as federal overreach was well received. However, the new legislation maintains a predominately test-based accountability system with a federal mandate for interventions in well over five thousand public schools every year. In this policy brief, the authors offer recommendations for state policymakers on both broad and focused ESSA implementation issues.

On May 4, 2010, the Obama administration released College- and Career-Ready Students, one of six research summaries supporting its proposals for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). This research summary addresses three key areas: common core standards, rewarding progress and success, and turning around low-performing schools. The proposed goals are laudable and the summary of the problems in American education is generally accurate. But the research foundation it provides is superficial and inadequate. Some of the significant proposals, such as the accountability system and "rewarding progress and success" are not addressed; and for two major issues, national standards and school turn-arounds, the research cited does not support the document's conclusions. Fewer than 15% of the report's references rely on independent, peer-reviewed research. The document advances rhetorical ends and political goals rather than providing a sound research base for the proposed policies. Overall, the document is of little or no value for those who seek evidence of the soundness of the Obama administration's proposed legislation.

Cover -- Series -- Title -- ISBN: -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Chapter 1: Assessing the Research Base for A Blueprint for Reform -- Chapter 2: A Review of College- and Career-Ready Students -- Chapter 3: A Review of Great Teachers and Great Leaders -- Chapter 4: A Review of A Complete Education -- Chapter 5: A Review of Meeting the Needs of English Learners and Other Diverse Learners -- Chapter 6: A Review of Successful, Safe, and Healthy Students -- Chapter 7: A Review of Fostering Innovation and Excellence -- About the Authors.

In this Policy Memo, Kevin Welner and William Mathis discuss the broad research consensus that standardized tests are ineffective and even counterproductive when used to drive educational reform. Yet the debates in Washington over the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act largely ignore the harm and misdirection of these test-focused reforms. As a result, the proposals now on the table simply gild a demonstrably ineffective strategy, while crowding out policies with proven effectiveness. Deep-rooted trends of ever-increasing social and educational needs, as well as fewer or stagnant resources, will inevitably lead to larger opportunity gaps and achievement gaps. Testing will document this, but it will do nothing to change it. Instead, the gaps will only close with sustained investment and improvement based on proven strategies that directly increase children's opportunities to learn.

This NEPC Policy Memo offers a list of experts who can speak to the overall knowledge base — to the weight of scholarly thought and research evidence in a given education policy area.