The accreditation process and the federal role in shaping it are clearly of critical importance for ensuring all students have access to quality postsecondary options. And yet, due to the complexity of the relationship among the federal government, accreditors, and institutions, and the opacity of the accreditation process itself, there is little…

After passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, states assumed greater responsibility for designing their own accountability and assessment systems. ESSA requires states to measure "higher order thinking skills and understanding" and encourages the use of open-ended performance assessments, which are essential for…

The use of assessments in public schools in the United States to link student test scores to school performance has arguably transformed assessments into accountability tools. Dennis S. Rosemartin, a former elementary classroom teacher, is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona. His area of specialization is teacher preparation and…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) opened up new possibilities for how student and school success are defined and supported in American public education. States have greater responsibility for designing and building their assessment and accountability systems. These new opportunities to develop performance assessments are critically important…

"IXL Learning" contracted with Empirical Education to study the effectiveness of "IXL Math" in Beaverton School District. During the 2011-2012 year, "IXL Math," an interactive, cloud-based practice environment, was used to supplement instruction in two elementary/middle schools. This study focused on 4th and 5th grade…

The purpose of this study was to examine Differential Item Functioning (DIF) by disability groups on an on-demand performance assessment for students with severe cognitive impairments. Researchers examined the presence of DIF for two comparisons. One comparison involved students with severe cognitive impairments who served as the reference group…

With the failure of the No Child Left Behind policies of the 1990's, educational reformers wished to establish a "new and improved" set of standards for the United States to follow. However, since their inception in 2006-2007, the new Common Core State Standards have become increasingly unpopular due to the fact that they remain largely…

Business intelligence (BI) tools offer schools the ability to look beyond a routine statistic, such as what percentage of students have passed a given test. Through data analysis, schools can view specific scores for a select group of students, for example, and compare that data to other groups, classes, or teachers. That is the kind of…

Purpose: Currently under the No Child Left Behind Act, cut scores of successive cohorts of students are used to identify schools that are successful and others that are failing. For many schools, however, this score does not provide an accurate, fair, or comprehensive performance assessment. The focus of this study is to compare three alternative…