Wade Cole, Robert Barnoski - December 2006

This interim report summarizes the work completed to date.

Robert Barnoski, Wade Cole - December 2006

The 2006 Legislature also directed the Institute to evaluate the effectiveness of Promoting Academic Success (PAS) remedial programs in helping students meet standard on the WASL. The study goals are to determine the overall effectiveness of PAS; the relative effectiveness of different remedial strategies; and the relative effectiveness disaggregated by student characteristics.

This report examines the overall effectiveness of summer 2006 PAS programs to help students meet standard on the WASL in August 2006. Effectiveness is defined as the difference in met-standard rates on the August WASL for students who did and did not participate in summer 2006 PAS.

Elizabeth Drake - November 2006

In 2006, the Office of Financial Management contracted with the Washington State Institute for Public Policy to conduct an audit of the Washington State criminal history records systems for adult felonies. Databases included in the audit are from the Administrative Office of the Courts, the Department of Corrections, the Sentencing Guidelines Commission, and the Washington State Patrol. This report is the first of a series and describes the research design and databases to be included in the study. The final report of the series will be completed by April 2007.

Wade Cole, Robert Barnoski - November 2006

A basic indicator of student performance on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) is the percentage of students who meet standard. This percentage can vary depending on which students are included in the calculation. As one in a series of reports on the WASL, this analysis describes the different ways to calculate the “met standard” rate.

Wade Cole, Robert Barnoski - November 2006

As one in a series of reports on the WASL, this report describes the use of alternate assessments for tenth grade students in special education in spring 2006.

Wade Cole, Robert Barnoski - November 2006

This report summarizes results of the 10th-grade WASL in spring 2006 by the racial/ethnic characteristics of students.

Wade Cole, Robert Barnoski - November 2006

This report describes associations among subject-area results for the 78,020 10th-grade students who completed the WASL in spring 2006. The analysis finds that the associations among subject-area results on the WASL are strong even though more 10th graders met standard in reading and writing than in math.

Robert Barnoski, Wade Cole - November 2006

This report examines longitudinal variability in student performance on math, reading, and writing strands for the 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL).

Wade Cole, Robert Barnoski - November 2006

This report examines the relationship between student performance on multiple-choice and open-ended items on the 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) in spring 2006.

Steve Aos, Marna Miller, Elizabeth Drake - October 2006

Under current long-term forecasts, Washington State faces the need to construct several new prisons in the next two decades. Since new prisons are costly, the 2005 Washington Legislature directed the Washington State Institute for Public Policy to project whether there are “evidence-based” options that can: a) reduce the future need for prison beds, b) save money for state and local taxpayers, and c) contribute to lower crime rates. This report describes our findings and discusses how we conducted the analysis. We review evidence-based adult corrections, juvenile corrections, and prevention options and analyze the effects of alternative portfolios of these investments.