Rankings of universities and colleges are common and controversial. However, few rankers produce useful lists that assess and compare journalism and mass communications programs. The few currently available involve superficial reputational surveys or are less than transparent about their methodology. To determine potential criteria for a useful…

The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between the concept of the 'world class' university and the evidence provided by published global institutional ranking systems and to assess the policy implications of seeking 'world class' standing whether driven by governments or by institutions themselves. There would be little…

Teacher evaluation systems can have high stakes for individual teachers, and it's important to ask how new evaluation models--including value-added measures--serve teachers as they strive to improve their practice. The authors interviewed teachers at a high-performing New York City school about their reactions to their value-added scores and…

International university rankings are a widely used measure of higher education excellence. Since publication rates are an important element in most ranking systems, pushing faculty to increase their publication in top-tier international journals is viewed by many government and university officials as an important strategy for improving ratings…

By the time children leave primary school there is a large socio-economic gap in their reading proficiency. There are a number of potential explanations for this socio-economic gap and in this paper we investigate the role of three particular genes and gene-environment interactions in determining children's reading skills, using the Avon…

In just a decade, the international university rankings have become dominant measures of institutional performance for policy-makers worldwide. Bolstered by the façade of scientific neutrality, these classification systems have reinforced the hegemonic model of higher education--that of the elite, Anglo-Saxon research university--on a global…

Rankings are a powerful force in higher education, swaying the enrollment decisions of prospective students and affecting the opinions of parents, board members, and policymakers. In the words of one provost, "The rankings matter to our university because they matter to people who matter to us." Rankings are also a business--one that is…

Development of the global information space is the basis of change in the educational paradigm and the formation of the world market of educational services. Traditional educational institutions face new challenges and risks that undermine their competitiveness. This implies the emerging phenomenon of online reputation risks, with significant…

This paper estimates technical efficiency scores across the community college sector in the United States. Using stochastic frontier analysis and data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System for 2003-2010, we estimate efficiency scores for 950 community colleges and perform a series of sensitivity tests to check for robustness. We…

Institutions are understandably interested in the profile of their own reputations based upon publicly available data about student experiences. The UK's National Student Survey (NSS) metrics are integrated into several "Good University" calculations, whereas teaching teams most often use the survey's text comments to change practices,…

The focus of recent Australian political and media reports on the selection of candidates for initial teacher education programs has focused on the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) score as one of the key indicators of worth. This narrative study conducted in an Australian regional university focuses on the life stories of twelve…

Assessments represent an important component of undergraduate courses because they affect how students interact with course content and gauge student achievement of course objectives. To make decisions on assessment design, instructors must understand the affordances and limitations of available question formats. Here, we use a crossover…

When the safety of the public is at stake, it is particularly relevant for licensing and credentialing exam agencies to use defensible standard setting methods to categorize candidates into competence categories (e.g., pass/fail). The aim of this study was to gather evidence to support change to the Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensing-USA…

This article organises potential areas of criticism or challenges embedded in the design and administration of standardised assessments of learning levels in order to promote dialogue and research on educational assessments. The article begins by addressing debates around epistemological claims: issues that pertain to testing in general and issues…

In 2013, a team of experts funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wrapped up a three year, $45 million project to identify Measures of Effective Teaching (MET)--an effort to determine whether it's possible to put numbers on something as complex as teaching. After reviewing 20,000 classroom videos, crunching data from thousands of student…