The Baltimore City Public School System's (BCPSS) Grade 9 Transition Program was implemented in 2001-02. It is designed to increase student achievement in an era of No Child Left Behind federal legislation by providing additional time and learning opportunities for eighth-grade students who have not met all promotion standards established by the…

This study examined the relationship between high-stakes testing pressure and student achievement across 25 states. Standardized portfolios were created for each study state. Each portfolio contained a range of documents that told the "story" of accountability implementation and impact in that state. Using the "law of comparative…

The research was conducted in Sydney and Hong Kong using students, from grades 5 to 9, whose first language or teaching medium was English, learning to read Chinese as second language. According to cognitive load theory, the processing of single Chinese characters accompanied by pictures should impose extraneous cognitive load and thus hinders…

Findings from a survey administered to large numbers of grade 7-10 students are presented in this paper. The focus is on the students' attitudes towards the use of computers for the learning of mathematics. Background information was also gathered which allowed the students' responses to be analysed by a range of equity factors--gender, ethnicity,…

Over a period of about 3 years, 3204 students in Grades 4 to 10 completed 9862 tests to identify and track their interpretation of decimal notation. Analysis of the longitudinal data demonstrates that different misconceptions persist among students to different degrees and in different patterns across the grades. Estimating the prevalence of…

The e-rater® system has been used by ETS for automated essay scoring since 1999. This paper describes a new version of e-rater (v.2.0) that differs from the previous one (v.1.3) with regard to the feature set and model building approach. The paper describes the new version, compares the new and previous versions in terms of performance, and…

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of a revised state-of-the-art drug prevention program, Project ALERT, on risk factors for drug use in mostly rural midwestern schools and communities. Fifty-five middle schools from South Dakota were randomly assigned to treatment or control conditions. Treatment-group students received 11…

This technical report presents an overview of a reading assessment used by a large school district in the Pacific Northwest. It provides sufficient background information to enable those unfamiliar with the assessment to understand the various subtests that comprise it as well as its development and application in the district for making…

The opportunity and right to obtain a free public education provides the opportunity for all Americans to achieve success socially, financially, and professionally. The public education system has endured decades of changes as it attempts to address social, cultural, and academic issues that arise as the nation evolves. The public education system…

The current investigation was an exploration of the first year of a multi-year project designed to provide every Grade 3 to Grade 11 student throughout an English school board in Quebec with a laptop computer. Data were collected from 403 elementary and 270 secondary students from the experimental school board and also from 330 students in the…

Junior and junior-senior high schools enroll a large proportion of our early adolescent population. The programs they provide, the services they offer, their administrative practices, and the character of their staffs have far-reaching effects. These programs, services, practices, and staff characteristics constitute the scope of the present…