
Education and Literacy;Race and Ethnicity
This report calls for greater involvement by federal and state policymakers and others to improve black male college readiness and completion. It presents policy-relevant trends concerning black male college students, highlights promising practices on campuses across the country, and proposes suggestions for policymakers and other stakeholders.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States

Education and Literacy;Race and Ethnicity
The College Board held seminars convening scholars, practitioners, and advocates from African-American, Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Native-American communities to explore the educational challenges facing young men. This report draws on participants' comments from these Dialogue Days, highlighting unique concerns among the racial/ethnic groups and also common themes.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States

Education and Literacy;Race and Ethnicity
The College Board held seminars convening scholars, practitioners, and advocates from African-American, Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Native-American communities to explore the educational challenges facing young men. This report draws on participants' comments from these Dialogue Days, highlighting unique concerns among the racial/ethnic groups and also common themes.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States

States and districts have launched unprecedented efforts in recent years to build new feedback and evaluation systems that support teacher growth and development. The goal is to improve practice so that teachers can better help their students graduate from high school ready to succeed in college and beyond.
These systems depend on trustworthy information about teaching effectiveness -- information that recognizes th complexity of teaching and is trusted by both teachers and administrators. To that end, the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project set out three years ago to investigate how a set of measures could identify effective teaching fairly and reliably. With the help of 3,000 teacher volunteers who opened up their classrooms to us -- along with scores of academic and organizational partners -- we have studied, among other measures:
- Classroom observation instruments, including both subject-specific and cross-subject tools, that define discrete teaching competencies and describe different levels of performance for each;
- Student perception surveys that assess key characteristics of the classroom environment, including supportiveness, challenge, and order; and
- Student achievement gains on state tests and on more cognitively challenging assessments. We have reported findings as we learned them in order to provide states and districts with evidence-based guidance to inform their ongoing work. In our initial report in 2010 (Learning about Teaching), we found that a well-designed student perception survey can provide reliable feedback on aspects of teaching practice that are predictive of student learning.
In 2012 (Gathering Feedback for Teaching), we presented similar results for classroom observations. We also found that an accurate observation rating requires two or more lessons, each scored by a different certified observer. With each analysis we have better understood the particular contribution that each measure makes to a complete picture of effective teaching and how those measures should be implemented to provide teachers with accurate and meaningful feedback.
This final brief from the MET project's three-year study highlights new analyses that extend and deepen the insights from our previous work. These studies address three fundamental questions that face practitioners and policymakers engaged in creating teacher support and evaluation systems.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States

It is very hard to support effective teaching without good information about actual teaching practice. The MET project has sought to build and test measures of effective teaching so that school systems can clearly understand and then close the gap between their expectations for effective teaching and the actual teaching occurring in classrooms.
But good information is hard to produce. It requires the right measures, the right measurement processes, strong communications, and an awareness of how information can be distorted. When given the right type of attention, measures can help set expectations and align effort.
It will require care and attention for teacher evaluation measures to serve both professional development and accountability purposes. To help states and districts navigate the work of implementing feedback and evaluation systems that support teachers, we offer nine guiding principles based on three years' of study, observation, and collaboration with districts. Our prior reports tested, and ultimately supported, the claim that measures of teaching effectiveness could be valid and reliable. These principles, explained on the following pages, fall into three overarching imperatives, as shown in Figure 1: Measure Effective Teaching; Ensure High-Quality Data; and Invest in Improvement. Note the cyclical presentation. Well-designed evaluation systems will continually improve over time.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States

State by state, our country is revamping our education system to ensure that each and every one of our young people is college and career ready. Over two-thirds of our states have adopted policies that enable credits to be awarded based on proficiency in a subject, rather than the one-size-fits-all seat-time in a classroom. Now states such as Maine and New Hampshire are taking the next step in establishing competency based diplomas in which students are expected to demonstrate that they can apply their skills and knowledge.
To ensure high-quality competency education, in 2011 one hundred innovators created a working definition to guide the field. This paper delves into the fourth element of the definition: Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs. Through a series of interviews and site visits, an understanding of how support in a competency-based school differs from traditional approaches emerged. Learning in a competency-based environment means pushing students and adults to the edge of their comfort zone and competence -- the learning edge. Common themes that were drawn from the wide variety of ways schools support students became the basis for the design principles introduced here.
It is essential to pause and understand the importance of timely, differentiated support. Our commitment to prepare all of our young people for college and careers demands that we be intentional in designing schools to effectively meet the needs of students of all races, classes, and cultures. It also demands our vigilance in challenging inequity. There is a risk in competency education -- a risk that learning at one's own pace could become the new achievement gap and that learning anywhere/anytime could become the new opportunity gap. Therefore, our goal in writing this paper is to provide ideas and guidance so that innovators in competency education can put into place powerful systems of supports for students in order to eradicate, not replicate, the inequities and variability in quality and outcomes that exist in our current system.
Please consider this paper as an initial exploration into what it means to provide support for the individual learning needs of students. It is designed to generate reflection, analysis, and feedback.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States

State by state, our country is revamping our education system to ensure that each and every one of our young people is college and career ready. Over two-thirds of our states have adopted policies that enable credits to be awarded based on proficiency in a subject, rather than the one-size-fits-all seat-time in a classroom. Now states such as Maine and New Hampshire are taking the next step in establishing competency based diplomas in which students are expected to demonstrate that they can apply their skills and knowledge.
To ensure high-quality competency education, in 2011 one hundred innovators created a working definition to guide the field. This paper delves into the fourth element of the definition: Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs. Through a series of interviews and site visits, an understanding of how support in a competency-based school differs from traditional approaches emerged. Learning in a competency-based environment means pushing students and adults to the edge of their comfort zone and competence -- the learning edge. Common themes that were drawn from the wide variety of ways schools support students became the basis for the design principles introduced here.
It is essential to pause and understand the importance of timely, differentiated support. Our commitment to prepare all of our young people for college and careers demands that we be intentional in designing schools to effectively meet the needs of students of all races, classes, and cultures. It also demands our vigilance in challenging inequity. There is a risk in competency education -- a risk that learning at one's own pace could become the new achievement gap and that learning anywhere/anytime could become the new opportunity gap. Therefore, our goal in writing this paper is to provide ideas and guidance so that innovators in competency education can put into place powerful systems of supports for students in order to eradicate, not replicate, the inequities and variability in quality and outcomes that exist in our current system.
Please consider this paper as an initial exploration into what it means to provide support for the individual learning needs of students. It is designed to generate reflection, analysis, and feedback.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States

State by state, our country is revamping our education system to ensure that each and every one of our young people is college and career ready. Over two-thirds of our states have adopted policies that enable credits to be awarded based on proficiency in a subject, rather than the one-size-fits-all seat-time in a classroom. Now states such as Maine and New Hampshire are taking the next step in establishing competency based diplomas in which students are expected to demonstrate that they can apply their skills and knowledge.
To ensure high-quality competency education, in 2011 one hundred innovators created a working definition to guide the field. This paper delves into the fourth element of the definition: Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs. Through a series of interviews and site visits, an understanding of how support in a competency-based school differs from traditional approaches emerged. Learning in a competency-based environment means pushing students and adults to the edge of their comfort zone and competence -- the learning edge. Common themes that were drawn from the wide variety of ways schools support students became the basis for the design principles introduced here.
It is essential to pause and understand the importance of timely, differentiated support. Our commitment to prepare all of our young people for college and careers demands that we be intentional in designing schools to effectively meet the needs of students of all races, classes, and cultures. It also demands our vigilance in challenging inequity. There is a risk in competency education -- a risk that learning at one's own pace could become the new achievement gap and that learning anywhere/anytime could become the new opportunity gap. Therefore, our goal in writing this paper is to provide ideas and guidance so that innovators in competency education can put into place powerful systems of supports for students in order to eradicate, not replicate, the inequities and variability in quality and outcomes that exist in our current system.
Please consider this paper as an initial exploration into what it means to provide support for the individual learning needs of students. It is designed to generate reflection, analysis, and feedback.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States