Education, Academic Performance

Christopher Weiss

The past 2 decades witnessed a marked increase in public attention to academic performance. Historically, concern about quality of the U.S. educational system has fluctuated, but rarely has there been a period of such intense interest in measuring and comparing performance of students, teachers, and schools. Whereas in earlier eras the measurement of performance focused on summary indicators, such as graduation from high school, recent efforts utilize more refined measures. Examining the current state of academic performance—defined broadly as how well students in schools achieve the goals established by and for them—requires examination of changes in performance measurement and the changes in the consequences of performance. Two broad reforms in U.S. education over the past decade drive the current focus on academic performance: the development and implementation of standards-based education and the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB). Both reforms sharpened policy focus on measuring ...

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