The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Education Program initiated a new strategic initiative in 2010 that focuses on students’ mastery of core academic content and their development of deeper learning skills (i.e., critical-thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and learn-how-to-learn skills). The Foundation would like to track the extent to which U.S. students are assessed in a way that emphasizes deeper learning skills during its 2010–2017 Deeper Learning Initiative. This report presents the results of a project to estimate the percentage of U.S. elementary and secondary students being assessed on deeper learning skills through statewide mathematics and English language arts achievement tests at the beginning of the Deeper Learning Initiative. This research has been conducted by RAND Education, a unit of the RAND Corporation.

RAND_Estimating_the_Percentage_November_2012.pdf