Much grading of student work is based, overtly or tacitly, on assumptions derived from scientific measurement. However, the practice of grading and the cumulation of grades into an overall index of achievement are socially constructed activities that fall a long way short of what is expected of scientific measurement. If scientific measurement is…

The PISA studies of reading achievement of 15 year old students in OECD and partner nations show Anglophone nations to have continuing high proportions of weak readers (less than or equal to Level 2), with no improvement in this area from 2000 to 2006 (OECD, "Science competencies for tomorrow's world: Executive summary," 2007). The…

A hallmark of the US education system is the opportunity afforded to students to pursue education and career paths of their own choosing. This flexibility and autonomy, however, has drawbacks. Students must navigate a series of complex and often disconnected environments, as well as numerous decision points, before they attain a fulfilling career.…

When the researcher proposed this study, no instrument existed for measuring citizens' attitudes toward school funding equity, so this study was designed as a series of investigations leading to the creation of such an instrument. In order to accomplish this purpose, the researcher first generated an initial pool of items to measure attitudes…

Value-added models have become popular fixes for various accountability schemes aimed at measuring teacher effectiveness. Value-added models may resolve some of the issues in accountability models, but they bring their own set of challenges to the table. Unfortunately, political and emotional considerations sometimes keep one from examining…

In his article, "An Alternative to Null-Hypothesis Significance Tests," Killeen (2005) urged the discipline to abandon the practice of "p[subscript obs]"-based null hypothesis testing and to quantify the signal-to-noise characteristics of experimental outcomes with replication probabilities. He described the coefficient that he…

Since articles on school choice naturally tend to concentrate on outcomes from various "initiatives," they tend to offer little by way of theoretical advance in the manner in which choice policy is understood or in the way school choice is actualized within families and how students are thought to benefit from it. Against a political…

This paper presents the author's comment on "Evaluation Field Building in South Asia: Reflections, Anecdotes, and Questions" by Katherine Hay. Hay raises a number of extremely relevant issues relating to evaluation field building in South Asia. In this paper, the author aims to underscore the importance of three priorities for initiating…

The author enjoyed reading Katharine Hay's ambitious and humbling visions for evaluation field building in South Asia. She has successfully positioned herself on a high mountain with a wonderful set of binoculars that enable her to see the entire evaluation landscape of South Asia. She magically sees and describes significant historical forces and…

On the surface, it would appear that procedures for administrative reviews and approvals ("xingzheng shenpi") (for institutions of higher education) have decreased today, but what has followed is an increase in administrative evaluations ("xingzheng pinggu") and administrative examinations ("xingzheng shencha"), and…

This paper contains results of an empirical study that tested the efficacy and acceptability of two templates designed to fully involve students in proper and fair peer-assessments of their group project work (GPW) by providing concrete evidence of independent progressive documentation of their peers' contributions to the work-process and…

A new report titled "The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers" concludes that teachers whose students tend to show high gains on their test scores (called "high value-added teachers") also contribute to later student success in young adulthood, as indicated by outcomes such as college attendance and future earnings. To support this claim, it is not…

This article discusses how Information and Communication Technologies can support 21st century assessment strategies and what needs to be done to ensure that technological advances support and foster pedagogical innovation. Based on an extensive review of the literature, it provides an overview of current ICT-enabled assessment practices, with a…

Early education has been a growing priority for the Obama administration, and its competitive funding is spurring innovation in this field around the country. In 2013, early education journalist Paul Nyhan, author of this report, conducted case studies of four competitive grant programs that are triggering changes in early education: "Race to…

Background: Those involved in school health education programs generally believe that health-education programs can play an important role in helping young people make positive health decisions. Thus, it is to document the effects of such programs through rigorous evaluations published in peer-reviewed journals. Methods: This paper helps the…