At Joseph Case Junior High School, a school located in Swansea, Massachusetts for students in grades six through eight; there was a problematic trend in regard to student achievement in mathematics. Upon completion of an analysis of student cohort results in mathematics on the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System), there was an…

In the summer of 2011, the Forum on Education Abroad conducted its fourth State of the Field Survey. This survey is an annual or biannual assessment of the very latest trends and issues in the field of education abroad. As in the past, questions on new topics have been combined with questions that have been asked on previous State of the Field…

In large-scale assessments, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), plausible values based on Multiple Imputations (MI) have been used to estimate population characteristics for latent constructs under complex sample designs. Mislevy (1991) derived a closed-form analytic solution for a fixed-effect model in creating…

A teacher's effectiveness has a tremendous impact on a child's learning and academic trajectory. Yet knowing that, and being able to create teacher evaluation systems that successfully measure and document teacher effectiveness, are two very different things. In fact, for as long as anyone can remember, a public school teacher's effectiveness and…

Kindergarten students (N = 95) in three schools and seven classrooms were observed for on-task versus off-task behavior during three literacy instruction opportunities; small group instruction, whole group instruction and the less structured library setting over the 2011-2012 school year. Students' early literacy skills were assessed before and…

Niigata University has started to develop the Niigata University Bachelor Assessment System (NBAS). The objective is to have groups of teachers belonging to educational programs discuss whether visualized learning outcomes are comprehensible. Discussions based on teachers' subjective judgments showed in general that visualized learning outcomes…

Frank Reliford, the Principal at Dee-Mack Intermediate since 2005, is familiar to almost every child in the community. 260 Students attend Reliford's school, and their status is a point of pride: Dee-Mack Intermediate is consistently one of the highest performing schools in the state. The change in student performance correlates to the…

This brief gives an overview of the prevalence, causes, and consequences of college remediation, which aims to improve basic literacy skills among college students.

Various studies have shown that the school system in South Africa is continually producing learners who are inadequately prepared for higher education studies, particularly schools in disadvantaged environments. The University of Venda (UNIVEN) is situated in an educationally disadvantaged environment. Most of the students who enroll at this…

The Common Core State Standards and the attendant assessments being developed by state consortia create a tremendous opportunity and simultaneous challenge for state boards of education. Many of the issues apply to all boards, even those in states that have not adopted the standards or assessments. Boards will need to think carefully about the…

Assessment permeates many aspects of our educational society. With the passage of federal legislation (i.e., No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004), assessment in the form of accountability is ever present in our K-12 educational system. Current assessment practices should be used in…

This article considers the underachievement of RPL in the Australian vocational education and training (VET) system, in terms of its apparent failure to reach and achieve outcomes for marginalised groups. It notes a range of analyses that are currently used to address this concern and draws on doctoral research in progress to highlight ontological…

Over the past decade there has been a major move to position "thinking" (however thinking is defined and enacted) as a more explicit outcome within the curriculum of many nations, with implications for teachers' professional development, assessment, and examination requirements. This paper analyses approaches to this challenge taken by…

This study examined how K-5 general and special educators (N = 102) would choose to allocate time in a 2-h language arts block if they could do so as they wished, and how these choices related to their knowledge base for reading instruction. Preferences for time allocation were assessed through an open grid on which participants listed…

This study used a Chinese-language version of the Index of Science Reading Awareness to explore the science reading metacognition and comprehension of Taiwanese students. Structural equation modelling results confirmed the underlying model comprised three clusters of metacognitive knowledge: beliefs and confidence in science reading, knowledge of…