One major aim of international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) is to monitor changes in student performance over time. To accomplish this task, a set of common items is repeatedly administered in each assessment and linking methods are used to align the results from the different assessments on a common scale. The present article introduces a…

Using an empirically-based simulation study, we show that typically used methods of choosing an item calibration sample have significant impacts on achievement bias and system rankings. We examine whether recent PISA accommodations, especially for lower performing participants, can mitigate some of this bias. Our findings indicate that standard…

Recent data have suggested that despite massive outlays on educational reform Qatar consistently ranks as one of the least academically proficient countries in key areas of literacy. Of the seventy-four countries that participated in PISA 2009 Qatar ranked between sixty-seven and sixty-nine in mathematics, reading and science literacy. Although…

There are large differences across countries in instructional time in public schooling institutions. For example, among European countries such as Belgium, France and Greece, pupils aged 15 have an average of over a thousand hours per year of total compulsory classroom instruction while in England, Luxembourg and Sweden the average is only 750…

This is a powerful critique of two decades of educational reform in New Zealand, from an educator who was deeply involved. It is also a provocative call for action. Bali Haque has been both a secondary school principal required to implement reform and a senior public servant in the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) tasked with pushing…

In large-scale assessment programs such as NAEP, TIMSS and PISA, students' achievement data sets provided for secondary analysts contain so-called "plausible values." Plausible values are multiple imputations of the unobservable latent achievement for each student. In this article it has been shown how plausible values are used to: (1)…