Test-based accountability as well as value-added asessments and much experimental and quasi-experimental research in education rely on achievement tests to measure student skills and knowledge. Yet, we know little regarding fundamental properties of these tests, an important example being the extent of measurement error and its implications for…

This study investigated the attitudes of primary school students towards computer based testing and assessment in terms of different variables. The sample for this research is primary school students attending a computer based testing and assessment application via CITO-OIS. The "Scale on Attitudes towards Computer Based Testing and…

This study examined test-optional admission policies and their effect on the composition of the student body at King's College. According to the College Board (2009), students from underrepresented populations do not perform as well as White students on standardized tests. Therefore, higher education institutions have established test-optional…

This paper challenges Hanushek and Woessmann's (2008) contention that the quality and not the quantity of schooling determines a nation's rate of economic growth. I first show that their statistical analysis is flawed. I then show that when a nation's average test scores and average schooling attainment are included in a national income model,…

Annual student testing may make it possible to measure the contributions to student achievement made by individual teachers. But would these "teacher value-added" measures help to improve student achievement? I consider the statistical validity, purposes, and costs of teacher value-added policies. Many of the key assumptions of teacher value added…

Value-added methods refer to efforts to estimate the relative contributions of specific teachers, schools, or programs to student test performance. In recent years, these methods have attracted considerable attention because of their potential applicability for educational accountability, teacher pay-for-performance systems, school and teacher…

Much of the argument about comparability of examination standards is at cross-purposes; contradictory positions are in fact often both defensible, but they are using the same words to mean different things. To clarify this, two broad conceptualisations of standards can be identified. One sees the standard in the observed phenomena of performance…

Robert Coe has claimed that three broad conceptions of comparability can be identified from the literature: performance, statistical and conventional. Each of these he rejected, in favour of a single, integrated conception which relies upon the notion of a "linking construct" and which he termed "construct comparability".…

The Government is committed to ensuring that the new National Curriculum compares favourably with the curricula in the highest performing jurisdictions, and sets rigorous requirements for pupil attainment which measure up to the highest standards set internationally. The Government is also committed to slimming the National Curriculum so that it…

This study examines whether MidYIS and YELLIS cognitive ability tests (CATs) are appropriate methods for the identification of giftedness in Design and Technology. A key rationale for the study was whether CATs and able to identify those students with the aptitudes considered of importance to identifying giftedness in Design and Technology and…

Distance Education has globally become one of the important solutions for increasing admission into the universities, decongesting campuses and efficient utilization of time and space. To ensure the sustainability of the programmes' noble objectives calls for periodic re-evaluation of its modus operandi including the assessment of the perception…

A new report published by the Manhattan Institute for Education Policy, "The Effect of Special Education Vouchers on Public School Achievement: Evidence from Florida's McKay Scholarship Program," attempts to examine the complex issue of how competition introduced through school vouchers affects student outcomes in public schools. The…

This running commentary cites examples to show that measurement and research in education, since Binet, have been used to solve school problems. Current problems cited stem from post-World War II acceptance of the goal of educating "all the children of all the people." Compensatory education, peer-tutoring vs. competitive scrambling, mastery…