The Southeast Comprehensive Center (SECC) at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL), an affiliate of American Institutes for Research (AIR), publishes a biannual update of college- and career-readiness state standards and assessment resources. It is designed to assist staff in state education agencies (SEAs) and other educators in…

This report presents the main findings from New Zealand Council for Educational Research's (NZCER's) latest survey of secondary schools, conducted in July and August 2015. These surveys have been done every 3 years since 2003. They provide a comprehensive national picture of what is happening in New Zealand secondary schools, how things have…

Illinois has set an ambitious target: 60% of working adults will hold a college degree or credential by 2025, as research suggests that at least 60% of jobs will require some type of educational credential past high school. Today, only 50% of the state's working adults hold college credentials. This report takes a snapshot of Illinois state's…

The purpose of the Schooling in America Survey is to measure public opinion on, and in some cases awareness or knowledge of, a range of K-12 education topics and school choice policies. The annual snapshots consider the perceived direction of American K-12 education; views on education spending; grades and preferences for different types of…

In this study, we use decomposition methods on PISA 2006 data to compare student academic performance across OECD countries. We first establish an empirical model to explain the variation in academic performance across individuals, and then use the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to decompose the achievement gap between each of the OECD…

School inspections are fundamental to quality assurance and improvement in many countries. Yet the question of the validity of these inspections has not yet been comprehensively addressed. This paper proposes a systematic approach to assessing the validity of school inspections, based on Messick's multifaceted concept of validity. We apply each…

This study examined the SAS Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS®) in practice, as perceived and experienced by teachers in the Southwest School District (SSD). To evaluate teacher effectiveness, SSD is using SAS EVAAS® for high-stakes consequences more than any other district or state in the country. A mixed-method design including a…

The purpose of this paper is to present the relevance of the three-step approach undertaken by a marketing academic working in the University of New England Business School to foster distance student's learning, satisfaction and overall study experience. This work is a reflection of the author's teaching practice whereby a multitude of innovative…

Pedestrians were stopped in the street and asked about their views on the teaching and learning of mathematics and English for boys and girls. Many commented on the importance of teachers for both subject areas; some respondents self-identified as teachers. In this article we present findings on the gendering of mathematics and English and the…

The landscape of science education is being transformed by the new "Framework for Science Education" (National Research Council, "A framework for K-12 science education: practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas." The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2012), which emphasizes the centrality of scientific…

The 3-year migration of the computing faculty for three undergraduate programs from ad hoc teaching to three accredited programs is the focus of this paper. This journey started after numerous international accreditation organizations were surveyed, and ABET was chosen as the faculty's target. In this paper, the timelines and processes for…

As educational needs of students change in response to changing demographics, economic factors, workforce needs, and school accountability requirements, school leaders must continually monitor and adjust curricula and associated methods of instructional delivery to increase student learning. The analysis of student performance data is a critical…

Recent Illinois legislation requires school principals in the state to be qualified to provide school leadership for children from preschool to grade twelve instead of kindergarten to grade twelve. Illinois is the first state to make such a change and may well serve as a model for change in school leadership preparation on a national level. The…

This article argues that high-stakes educational testing, along with the attendant questions of power, education access, education management and social selection, cannot be considered in isolation from society at large. Thus, high-stakes testing practices bear numerous implications for democratic conditions in society. For decades, advocates of…

Teachers committed to inclusive education have the potential to revolutionise pedagogical and assessment practices within regular classrooms simply because students with high needs challenge traditional assumptions about what it means "to learn" and "to assess". This creates opportunities for teachers to find creative ways to…