NWEA claimed their assessment results could accurately predict student performance in reading and mathematics on the ACT Aspire for students in Grades 7 through 10. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between students' scores on the NWEA MAP tests in reading and mathematics and the ACT Aspire for students in Grades 7…

Arkansas adopted the ACT ASPIRE as their summative assessment in 2015. ACT ASPIRE claimed their assessment results could accurately predict the composite scores on the ACT. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between students' scores on the ACT ASPIRE and the ACT for students in the Star City School District, as well as…

This study evaluates the Youth Development Program (YDP), a component of the federal Workforce Investment Act (WIA). We examine whether the YDP reduced dropout rates among youth in secondary schools in seven school districts in the impoverished Mississippi River Delta in southeast Arkansas. Initially, the program seems to have an impact. Students…

Educators and policymakers have set a goal that all students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. A substantial body of research supports the idea that the path to college and career readiness begins well before middle and high school. In an earlier policy report, ACT examined the percentage of academically far off track…

Background: Cluster-randomized experiments that assign intact groups such as schools or school districts to treatment conditions are increasingly common in educational research. Such experiments are inherently multilevel designs whose sensitivity (statistical power and precision of estimates) depends on the variance decomposition across levels.…