The aim of this study is to run a longitudinal, ten year experimental study studying the effects of preschool attendance on long-term academic performance throughout elementary school. This study will sample 500 students from the Kalamazoo, Michigan community and observe their standardized test scores as well as their behavioral and social…

Vocabulary plays a critical role in language and reading development for children, particularly those learning English as an additional language (EAL) (Stahl & Nagy, 2006). Previous research on vocabulary has mainly focused on measuring individual words without considering multi-word phrase knowledge, despite evidence that these items occur…

A leading challenge for educators in the twenty-first century is to effectively promote academic outcomes among diverse student learners. Indeed, students from diverse and/or minority ethno-cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds are much more likely to experience academic difficulties and dropout. The Common Core initiative has been…

This paper reveals the array of practices arising from strong policy pressure for improved student results in national literacy and numeracy tests in Australia: the National Assessment Programme in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). The paper provides an account of a policy context characterised by significant pressure upon teachers and principals to…

Recent studies have indicated, particularly in the European context, that students' mathematical successes on international tests of student achievement may not be attributable to the quality of classroom instruction, although, as is shown, this is unlikely to be the case in Flanders, the autonomous Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Flemish…

During the 2011-2012 academic year, Texas public schools began administering the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) in grades 3-8, replacing the old testing system, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). The TAKS-STAAR transition is a unique contextual backdrop for studying the role of state-mandated reading and…

A small group of high-performing East Asian economies dominate the top of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. This has caught the attention of Western policymakers, who want to know why East Asian children obtain such high PISA scores, and what can be done to replicate their success. In this paper I investigate…

Today's economy demands that all young people develop high-level literacy, quantitative reasoning, problem solving, communication, and collaboration skills, all grounded in a rigorous and content-rich K-12 curriculum. Acquiring these skills ensures that high school graduates are academically prepared to pursue the future of their choosing.…

On February 18, 2015, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) conducted a Performance Level Description Development meeting in Albany, New York. The meeting was convened to articulate the knowledge and skills expected of students at each level of performance, consistent with the policy vision set forth by the NYSED. The Performance Level…

Value-added assessment methods have been criticized by researchers and policy makers for a number of reasons. One issue includes the sensitivity of model results across different outcome measures. This study examined the utility of incorporating multivariate latent variable approaches within a traditional value-added framework. We evaluated the…

This study explored print-processing and vocabulary differences among a group of 5th- and 6th-grade students who had scored below the 50th percentile on a standardized reading test. Guided by the simple view of reading, we applied cut scores (low/high) to the students' performance on print-processing and vocabulary tasks. The design allowed for…

Two hundred and two (n = 202) sixth-grade students in social studies were administered a weekly vocabulary-matching curriculum-based measure (CBM) for 35 weeks. Students were also administered the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI), along with the annual state high-stakes test in Communication Arts. CBM scores were analyzed with respect to…

Purpose: The backdrop of the article is the emergence of an international and politically motivated ambition that aims at standardising the purpose and outcomes of teaching practices via various forms of outcome controls. This ambition of standardisation is discussed in a Swedish context in relation to social studies teaching, which, at its core,…

The quality of national examination items plays an enormous role in identifying students' competencies mastery and their difficulties. This study aims to identify the difficult items in the Junior High School Mathematics National Examination, to find the factors that cause students' difficulty and to reveal the strategies that the teachers and the…

This article reports the results of a quasi-experimental study conducted to examine the efficacy of a new time management intervention designed for high school students. Participants were 149 students from a highly selective private high school in the northeastern United States who were in the ninth grade. Half of the students participated in a…