State implementation of education reforms

A new report from the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance summarizes state implementation of key education reform strategies promoted under the Recovery Act.

Major findings include:

State implementation of education reforms in 2010-11 varied depending on the area of reform and specific strategy being examined. For example, in the area of educator workforce development, just 2 states reported supporting teacher evaluation models that included the use of multi-level ratings, multiple observations, and student achievement gains. In contrast, in the area of supporting low performing schools, 50 states reported providing guidance on choosing and implementing the four school intervention models defined by the US Department of Education.

State activity in some areas of implementation increased from 2009-10 to 2010-11. Across all of the reform strategies examined by the study, the largest increases in state activity were in allowing for expansion of the number of charter schools, providing guidance on choosing and implementing four school intervention models, facilitating educators’ access to assessment data, and providing professional development or technical assistance to support educators’ use of assessment data.

The implementation challenge reported by the largest number of states was difficulty in measuring student growth for teachers of nontested subjects.