School accountability—the process of evaluating school performance on the basis of student
performance measures—is increasingly prevalent around the world. In the United States …

To address the dropout crisis requires a better understanding of why students drop out.
Although dropouts themselves report a variety of reasons for leaving school, these reasons …

I survey the evidence on patterns in US high school graduation rates over the period 1970–
2010 and report the results of new research conducted to fill in holes in the evidence. I begin …

The No Child Left Behind Act, the major education initiative of the Bush Administration, was
intended to raise educational achievement and close the racial/ethnic achievement gap. Its …

We developed a zero-to-five index of the strength of accountability in 50 states based on the
use of high-stakes testing to sanction and reward schools, and analyzed whether that index …

This paper applies a unified methodology to multiple data sets to estimate both the levels
and trends in US high school graduation rates. We establish that (a) the true rate is …

Using panel data from a census of public school students in the state of Florida, the authors
examine the associations between students' high school course-taking in various subjects …

The American Dream and the Public Schools examines issues that have excited and divided
Americans for years, including desegregation, school funding, testing, vouchers, bilingual …

It is widely documented that places with higher levels of income inequality have lower rates
of social mobility. But it is an open question as to whether this reflects a causal relationship …

This study examines longitudinal student progress and achievement on the elementary,
middle, and high school levels in relation to accountability policy incentives in a large urban …