National Youth Employment Coalition: Information Center


Meaningful Measurement: The Role of Assessments in Improving High School Education in the Twenty-First Century (June 2009)
	As the nation embraces the goal of graduating all students college and career ready, there is a growing movement to realign standards, assessments, and accountability systems to that goal. Meaningful Measurement: The Role of Assessments in Improving High School Education in the Twenty-First Century, is a collection of essays by leading experts that discuss important assessment issues, examines promising assessment practices from across the globe, and offers recommendations on how the federal government can support an assessment agenda for the twenty-first century. Topics include: assessments that measure studentsâ?? college and career readiness, performance assessments, the role of benchmark assessments, assessing high school students who are English Language learners and students with disabilities, the benefits of international assessments, the role of technology in improving assessments and their use, and how assessment design affects the implementation of a growth model at the high school level. Chapter authors include Andreas Schleicher of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), Linda Darling-Hammond and Ray Pecheone of the School Redesign Network at Stanford, Rick Stiggins of the ETS Assessment Training Institute, and Judy Wertzel, formerly of the Aspen Institute.

Selected States' Responses to Supporting High School English Language Learners (Apr. 2009)
	This brief begins with a national snapshot of the achievement and educational outcomes of ELLs and efforts to improve the assessment and reporting of these outcomes. It then focuses on the efforts of Florida, California, Texas, and New York--the four states with the largest population of ELLs in schools--to use their state-level accountability systems and the NCLB mandate to implement and refine policies designed to support ELLs at the high school level. This brief also examines how state departments of education and Regional Comprehensive Centers in the selected states collaborate to promote positive changes to help strengthen the education of ELLs at the secondary level. The profiles of these states are intended (a) to provide a nuanced picture of how states with large populations of ELLs are using the NCLB mandate to improve educational outcomes for ELLs at the high school level and (b) to chart the considerable ground left to cover if we are to see significant, widespread and concrete gains in the support of ELL students. Author: Nanette Koelsch, WestEd

Dead Ends: The Need For More Pathways to Graduation for Overage, Under-credited Students in New York City - Dec. 2007
	This brief examines the ability of the Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation (OMPG) schools to meet the instructional needs of English Language Learners (ELLs), students with special education needs, students who are older with few or no credits, and students who are pregnant or parenting. 12/10/2007