Coalition calls for five specific reforms that stand the best chance of raising student performance.

The Coalition for Student Achievement has released five specific recommendations for governors, chief state school officers, superintendents and other state and local education leaders on how to best invest the federal stimulus dollars to leverage significant increases in student performance. 

As recommended by the guide, by 2012, Americans should expect to see:

1. At least 40 states adopting a common core of fewer, clearer, higher, standards.
2. Use of robust, user-friendly and timely data to know what is working for students, what is not, and what additional help students need.
3. Meaningful professional teacher evaluation systems that shine a spotlight on effectiveness and provide teachers with the support they need to improve.
4. Turn-around of the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools, with the help of new, quality education options, including public charters.
5. Targeted and intensive interventions for struggling students, including a longer school day and year, with instruction by the most effective teachers.

These recommendations were developed by a bipartisan group of more than 30 national education policy leaders and practitioners following an April convening sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation in response to requests from state and district education leaders on how to best invest the federal stimulus dollars.  The recommendations were generated from the practices and policies that will most likely dramatically raise student achievement in America, based on the group's decades of experience in education reform.

The resulting recommendations are intended to build upon federal guidance by providing detailed, specific, bold steps that state and local leaders can take to use the one-time American Recovery and Reinvestment Act investment to yield powerful, long-term student achievement results. 

Read the full report…

The Coalition for Student Achievement is comprised of 50 organizations that are committed to ensuring that federal education funds available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are leveraged to both stimulate economic recovery and drive education reform that will dramatically improve U.S. student achievement.  For more information, visit www.coalitionforstudentachievement.org.