South Africa's National Senior Certificate examination system was introduced in 2008 as a single national examination system, in order to facilitate fair and standardised assessment and to provide all learners with an equal chance of access to higher education. However, limited research has been done to investigate the discrimination power of the…

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…

This quantitative study examined the relationship between implementation of a Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) program and academic achievement, attendance, and discipline. The data was collected from schools from South Texas Educational Regions One, Two, and Twenty. The public middle school campuses for this study were chosen…

Grade inflation is pervasive in American high schools. Is rampant grade inflation cause for concern? How teachers' grading standards affect student success is an empirical question--one that the author addresses in this article in a new study of roughly 350,000 North Carolina students taking Algebra I between 2006 and 2016. The author first…

Prior work has documented a substantial penalty associated with taking the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) online relative to on paper (Backes & Cowan, 2019). However, this penalty does not necessarily make online tests less useful. For example, it could be the case that computer literacy skills are…

The purpose of this quantitative dissertation in practice was to explore the academic achievement of students of low socioeconomic status attending the District of Columbia's traditional and selective public high schools, as measured by the annual Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) standardized test scores. The…

The reading of complex text has become part of the reading curriculum since the introduction of the Common Core State Standards. However, little research has been conducted to determine the effect of complex text instruction on comprehension and fluency in secondary readers. This study randomly assigned 53 11th-grade US history students to one of…

This article reports on a study using data from nation-wide standardised examinations in Poland. We analysed the extent to which grade 9 student achievements have depended on the stability of their peer group over the course of middle school. We controlled for the fixed effects of schools attended by the students, as well as for individual…

This article investigates the effect of private lower secondary schools on student achievement in France. I use propensity score matching on a large French database to estimate the effect of enrollment in a private school on academic achievement as measured by ninth-grade test scores in three school subjects. I find that private school attendance…

The inclusion of students with disabilities in general education settings has steadily increased since the 1990s. Yet little is known about whether inclusive education is effective for these students or their non-disabled peers. I examine the impacts and associated costs of inclusive education on both student groups through the lens of one…

Students with language and/or attentional difficulties are present in all classrooms, but evidence indicates they are poorly identified and supported. Reasonable adjustments are a legislative requirement, but these are often generic and fail to address instructional barriers. Students are uniquely placed to report on the pedagogical implications…

As scientific literacy plays a contributing role in identifying, analysing, and solving environmental matters that our world is facing, there is growing consensus to mandate environmental matters in science classrooms following five decades of efforts in promoting environmental education. However, much remains unknown about the relationship…

This article explores emotional aspects of national grade policies in Sweden as they are enacted in feedback practices at middle school level. Policy measures such as standardized testing and grades have over the last decades put emphasis on academic outcomes in Sweden. However, research suggests that this emphasis can impact students' emotions…

This study, informed by Chicana Feminist frameworks, explores bilingual Latinx students' resistance testimonios pertaining to instruction and assessment. These testimonios transpired through pláticas [familiar gatherings] between adolescent youth and the author, also their former elementary school teacher. This study is contextualized within…

This project revealed the positive impact of the "SSS for SEL Success" program (SSS-SEL) on students' academics and perceived social/emotional adeptness. SSS-SEL, a new iteration of the "Student Success Skills" (SSS) program, teaches critical social/emotional concepts and strategies and was modified in this study to be…