This volume centres the notion of "chance" in education as a key concept in contemporary education -- relating to aspects like accountability, datafication, or international large-scale assessments -- and discusses the impact that the historical desire to "tame" this notion has had on present-day educational policy and…

The increasing volume of large-scale assessment data poses a challenge for testing organizations to manage data and conduct psychometric analysis efficiently. Traditional psychometric software presents barriers, such as a lack of functionality for managing data and conducting various standard psychometric analyses efficiently. These challenges…

This book provides a comprehensive introduction by an extraordinary range of experts to the recent and rapidly developing field of learning analytics. Some of the finest current thinkers about ways to interpret and benefit from the increasing amount of evidence from learners' experiences have taken time to explain their methods, describe examples,…

Education systems are increasingly creating rich, longitudinal data sets with frequent, and even real-time, data updates of many student measures, including daily attendance, homework submissions, and exam scores. These data sets provide an opportunity for district and school staff members to move beyond an indicators-based approach and instead…

This notebook contains the revised standards and guidelines for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), as well as an updated and consolidated version of NCES legislation. It is intended for NCES staff and contractors as a guide in their data collection, analysis, and dissemination. These standards and guidelines define the limits of…

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the analysis of data collected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In simplest terms, the analysis can be characterized as establishing baseline estimates of the percentages of young Americans possessing certain skills, knowledge, understandings, and attitudes and…

A guide to acquiring information needed about postsecondary education outcomes is presented for campus and state-level officials. Attention is directed to: over 200 outcome measures or indicators; standard definitions of each outcome measure; data sources and procedures to acquire data for each outcome measure; and suggestions concerning the…

The policy papers included in this package address various facets of the topic of data-based accountability for education in California. Guy Benveniste of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Education explores the underlying issue of accountability and describes the implications of different types of accountability measures. In…

In 1982, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) proposed to implement a new, complex design for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The major features of this design are described in "A New Design for a New Era" (Messick, Beaton, and Lord, 1983). The purpose of this document is to describe the actual implementation of…

This document is the users' guide for Version 3.1 of the Public-Use data tapes compiled by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1983-84. The Public-Use tapes are produced to allow outside researchers access to the NAEP data. The tapes accompanying this guide contain data assessing student achievement in reading and writing at…

This document is the users' guide for Version 1.0 of the Public-Use data tapes compiled by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1985-86. The Public-Use tapes are produced to allow outside researchers access to the NAEP data. The tapes accompanying this guide, one for grade 3/age 9, one for grade 7/age 13, and one for grade…

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) documents dimensions of quality in undergraduate education and provides information and assistance to colleges, universities, and other organizations to improve student learning. Its primary activity is annually surveying college students to assess the extent to which they engage in educational…

Graduation rates are often used indicators of the performance of institutions of higher education. How institutions are represented can be profoundly affected by different approaches used to develop the data for the rates. The impact of variations in how these rates are constructed is illustrated by the example of the City University of New York…

The Colorado Department of Education undertook the establishment of an educational quality database that would contain the information necessary for measuring the effects of various efforts at educational improvement. Five major planning concerns had to be resolved before the database itself could be established. First, it was determined that…

A study determines the effect of a six-day wilderness experience on self-concept, knowledge of and attitude toward the environment of twelfth grade students (n=61). Results indicate that changes in self-concept and environmental knowledge can occur from short-term wilderness experiences. (56 references) (MCO)