Author(s): The Brookings Institution – Brown Center on Education Policy
- Tom Loveless
Senior Fellow, The Brown Center on Education Policy
Published: March 18, 2014
Report Intro/Brief:
“This year’s Brown Center Report on American Education represents the third installment of volume three and the 13th issue overall since the publication began in 2000. Three studies are presented. All three revisit a topic that has been investigated in a previous Brown Center Report. The topics warrant attention again because they are back in the public spotlight.
Part I summarizes the recent controversy involving the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and its treatment of Shanghai-China. The PISA is a test given to 15-year-olds every three years in math, reading, and science…
Part II is on homework, updating a study presented in the 2003 Brown Center Report. That study was conducted at a time when homework was on the covers of several popular magazines. The charge then was that the typical student’s homework load was getting out of control. The 2003 study examined the best evidence on students’ homework burden and found the charge to be an exaggeration…
Part III is on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Forty-five states have signed on to the Common Core and are busy implementing the standards. How is it going? Admittedly, the Common Core era is only in the early stages—new tests and accountability systems based on the standards are a couple of years away—but states have had three or four years under the standards. Sufficient time has elapsed to offer an early progress report.”
-from the report
