Recent Publications by Adam Schott
Publication
An Analysis of Pennsylvania’s Cyber Charter Schools
Pennsylvania’s first charter school opened in 1998, enrolling 44 full-time students. The sector has since grown to 16 schools enrolling 35,000 students from all but one school district in the Commonwealth. This PACER Issue Brief…
Publication
From Policy to Practice: Tracing the Development and Implementation of Placement and Diagnostic Assessment across States, Systems, and Community Colleges — Phase I Report
Nationwide, postsecondary policymakers and administrators are responding to emerging research on whether placement exams are reliable gauges of students’ readiness for credit-bearing coursework. Specifically, the widespread use of placement tests may belie their effectiveness in…
Publication
From Policy to Practice: Tracing the Development and Implementation of Placement and Diagnostic Assessments across States, Systems, and Community Colleges — Phase 1 and Phase 2 Summary
Given the barrier that developmental education can present in students’ timely progress to degree completion and the variation in its effectiveness, Research for Action (RFA) examined assessment and placement reform efforts across five leading states—California,…
Publication
Lessons from Multiple Measures Reforms across Six Two-Year Colleges in Three States: Phase 2 Report
This report is a companion to Research for Action’s (RFA’s) earlier examination of the policy context in three states—California, North Carolina, and Wisconsin—where Multiple Measures reforms are underway in different forms. In this document, we…
Publication
Tracing the Development of Multiple Measures for College Placement across States and Systems
Research shows that between 24 and 33 percent of students are “misplaced” when entering college and therefore required to complete developmental education courses that hinder postsecondary completion. More specifically, nearly 40 percent of community college…
Publication
Pennsylvania’s School Performance Profile: Not the Sum of its Parts
Test-based accountability has been a primary feature of public school policy since 2001, when the No Child Left Behind Act required states to adopt annual assessment programs, identify sanctions for schools that did not meet…