Since 2007 the Oregon DATA Project has been investing resources to provide educators on-the-job training around effective data use to improve student achievement. New evidence shows that their efforts are paying off. A 2011 Oregon DATA Project report detailed the impact of their investment in the state's educators, finding the following: (1)…

This dissertation comprises three papers that propose, discuss, and illustrate models to make improved inferences about research questions regarding student achievement in education. Addressing the types of questions common in educational research today requires three different "extensions" to traditional educational assessment: (1)…

This study examines factors affecting students' performances in an Introductory Sociology course over five semesters. Employing simple and ordered logit regression models, the author explains final grades by focusing on individual demographic and educational characteristics that students bring into the classroom. The results show that a student's…

Teacher effort, a critical component of education production, has been largely ignored in the literature due to measurement difficulties. Using a principal-agent model, North Carolina public school data, and the state's unique accountability system that rewards teachers for school-level academic growth, we show that we can distill effort from…

Providing remedial (also known as developmental) education is the primary way colleges cope with students who do not have the academic preparation needed to succeed in college-level courses. Remediation is widespread, with nearly one-third of entering freshman taking remedial courses at a cost of at least $1 billion per year. Despite its…

During the 2009-2010 school year, Marzano Research Laboratory (MRL) was commissioned by Promethean Ltd. to conduct a second year evaluation study of the effects of Promethean ActivClassroom on student academic achievement. This report describes the findings from the second year study along with aggregate findings from the first and second year…

In this article we report a 3-yr study of a large-enrollment Cell Biology course focused on developing student skill in scientific reasoning and data interpretation. Specifically, the study tested the hypothesis that converting the role of exams from summative grading devices to formative tools would increase student success in acquiring those…