Rising college prices, stagnating incomes, and diminished asset values have led to the widespread perception that college is "unaffordable" for more and more people. The role of student aid in reducing the prices many students pay is too complex to be widely understood, and in spite of increasing enrollment rates, most people do not question the…

The judgmental approaches used by the Governing Board to set National Assessment of Educational Progress achievement levels have been the subject of a great deal of controversy and have sometimes led to results that were considered "unreasonable." The NCES requirement that the achievement levels be used on a trial basis and be…

This study examines the influence of action research on California community college practitioners' attitudes, beliefs, and behavior using the Center for Urban Education's (CUE) Equity Scorecard tools and process. This developmental evaluation study began March 2011 and concluded April 2012. The pseudonym of the field site studied is Las Flores…

This research provides the first review of publicly available assessment information found on Association of Research Libraries (ARL) members' websites. After providing an overarching review of benchmarking assessment data, and of professionally recommended assessment models, this paper examines if libraries contextualized their assessment…

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the conceptual, methodological, and statistical challenges in selecting appropriate peer institutions for comparative purposes. The authors' approach embraces a Western scientific tradition that physical things and phenomena can be "reduced into a set of key variables--identifiable parts--that make key…

The purpose of this student-faculty partnership research study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a blended four-year Bachelor of Education Elementary Program at a Canadian university using the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) framework. Data was collected from the first graduating cohort of students from the B.Ed. program in…

This report looks at student growth in Arkansas school districts disaggregated by district poverty and by the district's value-added performance relative to other districts. We estimated district value-added performance statistics by subject and grade level (8 and 11-12) for longitudinal student cohorts, using statistical models that adjusted for…

This research addresses the problem of low math achievement of middle school students through the use of a Growth Mindset intervention and related strategies. While the research on Growth Mindset interventions and strategies show positive results in controlled settings, there is a need to better understand Growth Mindset implementation from the…

The purpose of this memorandum is to provide SAT participation and performance for the 2017 graduates in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). The College Board redesigned the SAT with the goal of measuring essential skills for college and career as well as relating the test content to everyday learning in classrooms. The redesigned SAT was…

Examining traditional and contemporary professional development practices of youth-serving organizations can inform practices across Extension, particularly in light of the barriers that have been noted for effectively developing the professional competencies of Extension educators. With professional development systems changing quickly,…

This paper reports on the perspective of industry stakeholders in a national project to develop a Learning and Teaching Academic Standards (LTAS) Statement for the Agriculture discipline. The AgLTAS Statement will be aligned with the Science LTAS Statement published in 2011 and comprise a discourse on the nature and extent of the Agriculture…

Effective science communication is one of the key skills undergraduates must achieve and is one of the threshold learning outcomes for Science (TLO 4.1). In addition, presenting published research to their peers allows students to critically evaluate scientific research (TLO 3.1) and develop a deeper appreciation for the link between experimental…

The benchmarking framework developed in this study is specifically designed for higher education institutions to consider when developing environments to encourage entrepreneurship among their students, graduates and staff. The objective of the study was to identify key success factors of Graduate Entrepreneurship Incubator Environments (GEIEs)…

Science education in China is Subject Matter Knowledge (SMK) oriented in that SMK understanding is the major benchmark to assess students' achievement in science learning. Such an orientation causes students to overemphasize the memorization of SMK and neglect other indispensable components of science, such as scientific attitudes and research…

This paper aims to analyse the role of time concentration of instructional hours on the acquisition of formulaic sequences in English as a foreign language (EFL). Two programme types that offer the same amount of hours of instruction are considered: intensive (110 hours/1 month) and regular (110 hours/7 months). The EFL learners under study are…