National and state-based assessments have been a common practice for the past several decades. These assessments often come with high-stake consequences for students and schools, which tends towards the creation of a test-centric environment where educators prioritize test-based instruction to prepare students to be successful on those…

The "2020-2021 WIDA Assessment Guidance" provides information on the following 14 topics: (1) English Language Proficiency Requirements; (2) WIDA Assessments in Grades K-12; (3) WIDA ACCESS Annual Assessments Test Window; (4) Participation Requirements; (5) Indiana English Learner Entrance and Exit Criteria; (6) Scheduling and Timing…

The study focused on language skills of students entering and exiting from introductory Samoan classes at American Samoa Community College. The problem was growing writing deficiencies in Samoan evidenced by students' performance on the Samoan Studies Institute Exam for Basic Samoan Classes and classroom work. Faculty needed a swift grammatical…

In response to increasingly multilingual and multicultural demographics in U.S. K12 schools, scholars have called for more equity and social justice orientations to teacher leadership. In this dissertation, I argue that this call is especially pertinent for ESOL Teacher Leaders (ELTs) who manage rapidly-growing language support programs for…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of special education teachers when preparing students for high-stakes tests. National education laws require teachers to provide quality instruction to prepare students for high-stakes tests. While general and special education teachers are responsible for providing instruction, there is…

Secondary analyses of international large-scale assessments (ILSA) commonly characterize relationships between variables of interest using correlations. However, the accuracy of correlation estimates is impaired by artefacts such as measurement error and clustering. Despite advancements in methodology, conventional correlation estimates or…

Mandatory grade retention for poor-performing readers has been a disputed practice for decades. Since the early-2000s, state-level mandatory grade retention policies have proliferated. In 18 states and Washington, D.C. mandatory grade retention exists for students in the third-grade who fail an end-of-year standardized reading exam. These policies…

Complex Problem Solving (CPS) can be defined as those psychological processes that enable a person to achieve goals under complex conditions, which are characterized by their complexity, connectivity, dynamics, lack of transparency, and polytely. Although many hypothesized influences have previously been tested concerning their relevance for the…

This study aims to investigate patterns of variation in the interplay of L2 language ability and general reading comprehension skills in L2 reading, by comparing item-level effects of test-takers' results on L1 and L2 reading comprehension tests. The material comes from more than 500,000 people tested on L1 (Swedish) and L2 (English) in the…

This article is an overview of the National Assessment of Education Quality (NAEQ) of China in reading, mathematics, sciences, arts, physical education, and moral education at Grades 4 and 8. After a review of the background and history of NAEQ, we present the assessment framework with students' holistic development at the core and the design for…

International large-scale assessments of student achievement such as International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Program for International…

The PM Benchmark Reading Assessment Resource (PM Benchmarks) provides information about primary students' level of achievement in reading accurately, fluently, and in understanding unseen texts. As part of the assessment, students have to orally retell what they have read and orally answer comprehension questions. This oral use of language…

This text represents two extracts from a submission to the House of Commons Select Committee's investigation into primary school tests. The first part is a critique of the 2016 tests, particularly the Reading and Grammar tests for 11-year-olds and also the highly regulated "teacher assessment" of Writing. The second part is a set of…

Although Goodman-Kruskal gamma (G) is used relatively rarely it has promising potential as a coefficient of association in educational settings. Characteristics of G are studied in three sub-studies related to educational measurement settings. G appears to be unexpectedly appealing as an estimator of association between an item and a score because…

Buros' "Mental Measurements Yearbook (MMY)" has provided professional reviews of commercially published psychological and educational tests for over 80 years. It serves as a kind of conscience for the testing industry. For a random sample of 50 entries in the "19th MMY" (a total of 100 separate reviews) this study determined…