W. Christopher Brandt

Schools that show better academic performance than would be expected given characteristics of the school and student populations are often described as "beating the odds" (BTO). State and local education agencies often attempt to identify such schools as a means of identifying strategies or practices that might be contributing to the schools' relative success. Key decisions on how to identify BTO schools may affect whether schools make the BTO list and thereby the identification of practices ...

uring the past decade, the use of standardized benchmark measures to differentiate and individualize instruction for students received renewed attention from educators. Although teachers may use their own assessments (tests, quizzes, homework, problem sets) for monitoring learning, it is challenging for them to equate performance on classroom measures with likely performance on external measures, such as statewide tests or nationally normed standardized tests. One of the most widely used comm...