Student learning is increasingly taking place in digital environments both within and outside schooling contexts. Educational assessments are following suit, both to take advantage of the conveniences and opportunities that digital environments provide as well as to reflect the mediums of learning increasingly taking place in societies around the…

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the…

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) mission is to enhance knowledge about education systems worldwide, and to provide high-quality data that will support education reform and lead to better teaching and learning in schools. In pursuit of this aim, it conducts, and reports on, major studies of student…

This paper examines the impact of a school board's one-to-one iPad initiative on equity and inclusion. Data include: questionnaires from Grade 7-9 students, teachers, and administrators; focus groups with inclusion coaches; and interviews with classroom teachers. The results show that the iPads have supported equity among students in the district;…

This paper investigates achievement gaps between low and high socioeconomic students in 19 high-income countries. On average, math scores of students with indicators of high socioeconomic status (SES) are over one standard deviation above those with low SES indicators. The paper estimates the extent to which these achievement gaps can be…

This study explores the variations in the academic trajectories of socio-demographic subgroups of English as a second language (ESL) students (N = 7527) in British Columbia, Canada. Results are compared to a native English speaker baseline (N = 37,612). Longitudinal data describing the 1997 Grade 8 cohort (i.e., students age 13, typically in their…

Canada depends on a steady flow of immigrants to maintain a viable workforce within an aging population. Without immigration, Canada's dependency ratio--the number of employed versus non-employed individuals--would grow dangerously unbalanced. In recent years, most immigrants have come from countries where the spoken language is not English or…

Describes the results of survey of 1,100 grade 5, 8, and 11 students to determine their knowledge of and attitudes toward world affairs. Notes that age, sex, and class were the most important correlates and that children were only marginally more knowledgeable about domestic politics than international affairs. (SB)

A longitudinal evaluation of language arts and mathematics achievement for grades 5 to 8 in the St. Catharines, Ontario school system over a forty-year span is presented. The comparison is based on three different studies conducted from 1933 to 1938, from 1952 to 1954, and from 1975 to 1977. Secondary contributions--the effects of changes in…