This study determined that the addition of Structured Learning Assistance (SLA) attendance increased passage rates (from 66.5% to 82%) of first year students in English 101 courses. The model predicts first year students' performance in college writing, controlling for variables such as American College Test scores, and gender. A…

The role of teachers in fostering creative processes in children is essential. However, high stakes instruction and teaching to the test inundates our current classrooms. This study explores the relationship between ACT/SAT scores and creativity among pre-service teachers. One hundred eighteen undergraduate students identified as Education majors…

Undergraduate grade point average (GPA) is a commonly employed measure in educational research, serving as a criterion or as a predictor depending on the research question. Over the decades, researchers have used a variety of reliability coefficients to estimate the reliability of undergraduate GPA, which suggests that there has been no consensus…

Although memory retrieval often enhances subsequent memory, Peterson and Mulligan (2013) reported conditions under which retrieval produces poorer subsequent recall--the negative testing effect. The item-specific--relational account proposes that the effect occurs when retrieval disrupts interitem organizational processing relative to the restudy…

This study compares the results of a developmental co-requisite program with those of a traditional pre-requisite program in an attempt to determine whether the two models provide equivalent levels of effectiveness and efficiency. The research focused on gateway course completion scores and final exam scores for undergraduate students enrolled in…

General Chemistry is a high impact course at Benedictine University where a large enrollment of ~250 students each year, coupled with low pass rates of a particularly vulnerable student population from a retention point of view (i.e., first-year college students), make it a strategic course on which to focus innovative pedagogical development.…

This study compares two methods of defining groups for the detection of differential item functioning (DIF): (a) pairwise comparisons and (b) composite group comparisons. We aim to emphasize and empirically support the notion that the choice of pairwise versus composite group definitions in DIF is a reflection of how one defines fairness in DIF…

This study examined the relationship between the American College Testing (ACT) college mathematics readiness standard and college mathematics achievement using a sample of students who met or exceeded the minimum 3 years high school mathematics coursework recommended by ACT. According to ACT, a student who scores 22 or higher on the ACT…

Some high schools are moving towards standards-based grading in an attempt to produce consistent grading practices; however, the change's impact on college readiness is not clear. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of high school's grading practices as it relates to ACT scores and grade point averages (GPAs). Existing data were…

One primary goal of many science courses is for students to learn creative problem-solving skills; that is, integrating concepts, explaining concepts in a problem context, and using concepts to solve problems. However, what science instructors see is that many students, even those having excellent SAT/ACT and Advanced Placement scores, struggle in…

This study examined the trends in enrollment numbers and academic quality of first-year Tennessee students on the merit-based portion of the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship (TELS) upon HBCU's and religiously focused institutions in Tennessee from 2005-2014. The researchers hypothesized that the merit-based portion of the TELS was a…

This paper examines the effects of requiring and paying for all public high school students to take a college entrance exam, a policy adopted by eleven states since 2001. I show that prior to the policy, for every ten poor students who score college-ready on the ACT or SAT, there are an additional five poor students who would score college-ready…

Proficiency with written communication (WC) is critical for success in college and careers. As a result, institutions face a growing challenge to accurately evaluate their students' writing skills to obtain data that can support demands of accreditation, accountability, or curricular improvement. Many current standardized measures, however, lack…

Focusing on a cohort of high school students from a Midwest metropolitan region, this study combines multiple sources of data and uses a multinomial logistic regression to model student postsecondary choices with respect to whether and where to attend college. Specifically, we examined the enrollment patterns by proximity to the home region and…

Acid-base chemistry is central to a wide range of reactions. If students are able to understand how and why acid-base reactions occur, it should provide a basis for reasoning about a host of other reactions. Here, we report the development of a method to characterize student reasoning about acid-base reactions based on their description of…