In spite of the barrage of anti-testing news, some teachers say tests have not sapped their creativity or hindered collaboration and that they appreciate having useful data, a road map for instruction, and a sense of accountability for all educators.

We examine the impact of charter schools on school integration in the Little Rock, Arkansas metropolitan area. We find that charters are less likely to be hyper-segregated than traditional public schools (TPS), but TPS have compositions more closely reflecting the region. However, differences in each case are slight. Using student-level data to follow students who left TPS for charters, we find that most transfers improve integration levels at the schools they left. This finding is attributed to the fact that most transfers involve minority students leaving predominately minority schools or White students leaving predominantly White schools.

The Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) is deeply involved in the development and the test of the NISP (Near Infrared Spectro-Photometer) instrument for the ESA EUCLID mission that will be launched in 2020. The goal of the mission is to understand the nature of the dark energy responsible for the accelerating expansion of the Universe. NISP is one of its two instruments operating in the near-IR spectral region (0.9-2μm) to map the geometry of the dark Universe. The integration of the NISP flight model (FM) has been started at LAM to allow its delivery in 2019 to the payload after vibration test and two thermal vacuum test campaigns to demonstrate the performance of the instrument. The thermal vacuum test will take place in ERIOS chamber, a 90m3 chamber developed by LAM to test optical instruments at cryogenics temperature and high vacuum. In addition to the chamber, a full and specialised set of ground support equipment called the Verification Ground System (VGS) is developed to fill the goal of the NISP test campaign. The test campaign combines functional tests of the detectors and wheels, performance tests of the instrument, calibration procedure validation and observations scenario test, all done at LAM. One of the main objectives of the test campaign is the measurement of NISP focus position with respect to the EUCLID object plane. The VGS is made of i) a telescope simulator to simulate the EUCLID telescope for optical performance tests, ii) a thermal environment to simulate the Euclid PLM thermal interfaces, iii) the NISP Electrical GSE (EGSE) to control the instrument during the test and iv) a Metrology Verification System (MVS) to measure the positions of NISP and the telescope simulator during the test. We present the set of GSE developed for NISP and their performance already validated during two blank tests: thermal blank test and metrology blank test. In addition, a blank test with all the VGS parts (thermal, optical, metrology) is scheduled in the coming months to validate the overall performance of this GSE including the telescope simulator. The goal is to measure with a high precision the focus distance of the telescope simulator at cold and the stability of the focus in time, and to demonstrate the functionality of the telescope simulator for NISP test campaign needs. Finally, we describe the thermal vacuum test configuration for the "end to end" test on the NISP flight model foreseen by beginning of 2019.

We've spent four years assessing claims about the potential for implementing performance-based pay (or merit pay) for educators in elementary and secondary schools. In the theoretical realm, passionate promoters of merit pay have argued that such a scheme would properly align incentives for teachers so the most talented are recruited, the best are rewarded, and the laggards are relocated to a different profession. On the other hand, fervent foes of the practice contend that performance pay would not capture all that teachers do and would instead result in a counter-productive narrowing of the teacher's goals and divisive competition between and among educators who would otherwise seek fruitful collaboration.Of course, one problem with these philosophical disputes is that they were often made in the absence of evidence. So how do these programs affect teacher performance and, thus, affect student learning? A review of empirical data from the handful of merit pay schemes in the United States and abroad revealed, not surprisingly, that the results of these programs are mixed. Some programs showed significant student achievement gains, others did not. However, perhaps one reason for the lack of positive results for several attempted programs was that they were aborted early, often due to heated opposition from teacher groups. And yet, programs that were sensibly implemented and

No abstract