We examined the degree to which content of states' writing standards and assessments (using measures of content range, frequency, balance, and cognitive complexity) and their alignment were related to student writing achievement on the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), while controlling for student, school, and state…

Using National Assessment of Educational Progress data from 2003 to 2015, this brief describes changes in the reading and mathematics performance of multilingual students--defined as students who report a primary home language or languages other than English. Although all students' scores improved, multilingual students' scores improved two to…

In this study we identify and compare the impact of standardised student assessment in England, an established neoliberal context, and in Denmark where a neoliberal education reform agenda is emerging in response to both national concerns and international governance. National reading tests for students aged 11-12 years, long established in…

This study explores digital and paper reading processes and outcomes for 371 fifth to eighth graders completing a reading task similar to standardized testing. Results showed students highlighted and annotated more when reading the paper versus digital text. Also, reading on paper versus digitally was slightly supportive of reading comprehension…

In 2018 NAPLAN (National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy) reached a 10-year milestone. Introduced in 2008 by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), NAPLAN assesses student literacy and numeracy in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. As a key education reform in Australia, NAPLAN has provoked critical debate across…

In this secondary analysis study, the authors explored the relations between reading comprehension and oral reading performance in fourth-grade students, using a data set from the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) special study of oral reading. The data set consisted of 1,713 students randomly selected from the 140,000 fourth…

Many Australian young people experience mental health concerns, academic and study-related stresses, and socio-economic pressures. Phenomenological research conducted among primary and secondary schoolteachers in four Australian states investigated how teachers manage student wellbeing concerns and academic pressures and stresses. Findings…

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) makes it possible to compare the performance of students in the US in Mathematics and Science to the performance of students in other countries. TIMSS uses four international benchmarks for describing student achievement: Low, Intermediate, High, and Advanced. In this study, we…

Despite an intense focus on improving Australian students' writing performance in recent years, and comprehensive instructional advice to English teachers, researchers have noted a lack of gains in standardised writing tests and negative effects on student engagement and learning. In this paper we claim that these outcomes are partly attributable…

The aim of this paper is to analyse how Swedish grade three children are discursively positioned as pupils when they are taking national tests in mathematics and when they reflect on the testing situation afterwards. With support from theories about affective-discursive assemblages, we explore children's body language, emotions, and talk in light…

School socio-economic compositional (SEC) effects have been influential in educational research predicting a range of outcomes and influencing public policy. However, some recent studies have challenged the veracity of SEC effects when applying residualised-change and fixed effects models and simulating potential measurement errors in hierarchical…

In this article, we map the extent of educational inequality within Tasmania, and between Tasmania and the rest of Australia, using "National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy" (NAPLAN) and senior secondary attainment data. This analysis yields some surprising findings, showing the success of Tasmanian primary and high schools…

Missing data is a common problem in datasets that are obtained by administration of educational and psychological tests. It is widely known that existence of missing observations in data can lead to serious problems such as biased parameter estimates and inflation of standard errors. Most of the missing data imputation methods are focused on…

In the last decades, most countries have adopted data-intensive policy instruments aimed at modernizing the governance of education systems, and strengthening their competitiveness. Instruments such as national large-scale assessments and test-based accountabilities have disseminated widely, to the point that they are being enacted in countries…

Purpose: Existing studies of school efficiency primarily specify teacher inputs as the number of teachers and perhaps the student-teacher ratio. As a result, there is no direct qualitative recognition of the learning environment. The purpose of this paper is to incorporate the learning environment directly into the assessment of school efficiency.…