Over the last two decades, the educational use of digital devices, including digital assessments, has become a regular feature of teaching in primary education in the Netherlands. However, researchers have not reached a consensus about the so-called "mode effect," which refers to the possible impact of using computer-based tests (CBT)…

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the…

The OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 (E2030) project's overall goal is that of looking to the future in terms of how school curricula should evolve given the technological advances and other changes that societies are now facing. Towards that end, the E2030 project centres on the idea that education needs to equip students with the…

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) mission is to enhance knowledge about education systems worldwide, and to provide high-quality data that will support education reform and lead to better teaching and learning in schools. In pursuit of this aim, it conducts, and reports on, major studies of student…

In educational measurement, responses of students on items are used not only to measure the ability of students, but also to evaluate and compare the performance of schools. Analysis should ideally account for the multilevel structure of the data, and school-level processes not related to ability, such as working climate and administration…

Most existing research indicates that working students perform more poorly than do full-time students on standardized achievement tests. However, we know there are wide international variations in this gap. This article shows that national and international contexts help to explain the gap in the academic performance between working and nonworking…

Educators, policymakers, and parents alike are focused on ensuring the academic success of the nation's students. These efforts interact with the expanding use of technology, which affects the lives of students both inside and outside of the classroom. Thus, the role that technology plays in education is an evolving area of research that continues…

This paper examines which configuration of teaching activities maximizes student performance. For this purpose a nonparametric efficiency model is formulated that accounts for (1) self-selection of students and teachers in better schools and (2) complementary teaching activities. The analysis distinguishes both individual teaching (i.e., a…

Prepared for a Strategic Education Governance learning seminar, this working paper analyses the ways in which the Dutch government tried to reach overarching goals in education, in a system characterised by a high degree of distributed autonomy of education institutions and the participation of multiple actors, and consequently a government highly…

This paper studies the link between school facilities (buildings and grounds) and student achievement in eight countries using data from the TIMSS 2003 database. The results indicate a negative relationship, but the estimated coefficients are mainly insignificant. Interestingly, the coefficients differ heavily across countries. Whereas there seem…

Romania's education system has made impressive strides over the past two decades, with an increasing share of students mastering the basic competencies that they need for life and work. But these average improvements mask significant disparities in learning outcomes and attainment, with an increasing share of students leaving education early…

The PISA survey influences educational policies through an international competitive process which is not wholly rationally-oriented. Firstly, PISA league tables act normatively upon the definition of formal educational aims while the survey tests cannot evaluate the educational systems' relative strengths with regards to such aims. We argue that…

This paper investigates achievement gaps between low and high socioeconomic students in 19 high-income countries. On average, math scores of students with indicators of high socioeconomic status (SES) are over one standard deviation above those with low SES indicators. The paper estimates the extent to which these achievement gaps can be…

Secondary school teaching is organized in departments and effective departments functioning as collaborative teams have been associated with effective schools. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship of mathematics departments perceived as professional communities and student achievement in Dutch secondary schools. Cluster analysis and…

Using an equity perspective, this article compares the education systems of the United States and the Netherlands. Existing data examining student demographics, the organizational structures, curricula, funding, and student outcomes are examined. The Netherlands appears to be getting a "bigger bang for their buck." We make the case that…