With the recent emphasis on human development, development researchers are making frequent use of aggregate demographic measures in describing development experiences and more so while linking health and development. And it is often seen that comparison of these demographic aggregates across space and time is naive given their complex construct on…

This paper examines how differences in curricular design of undergraduate accounting programs influence pass rates on the Business Environment and Concepts Section of the CPA Exam. The association of the pass rate of a school's accounting graduates to the design of the schools accounting program and to other school characteristics was examined…

Problems with accountability systems are presented to demonstrate the author's view that accountability is essentially negative and can serve only to succeed in making schools more alienating for students and teachers than they currently are. (JMF)

Merit is an intrinsic measure of value which inheres in the evaluated entity itself, while worth depends on the interaction of the evaluated entity with its context and may vary dramatically from context to context. If taken seriously, the differences point toward the need for more naturalistically oriented evaluation. (RL)

A simple unbalanced block model is proposed for examination marks, as an improvement on the usual implicit model. The new model is applied to some real data and is found, by the usual normal linear theory F test, to give a highly significant improvement. Some alternative models are also considered. (Author)

Describes the program the Michigan department of education mounted to improve the way in which the media report the results of the Michigan Educational Assessment Program, a program that tests the basic skills of all fourth-, seventh-, and tenth-grade students each year. (IRT)

Some educators argue that the grade is only as good an index as the teacher who gives it. The present educational system has instilled in the public the notion that students must show evidence that they have achieved academic experiences. Grades have become the visible index of that evidence. (Author)

In Scotland, a school subject department's "performance" is determined by its "relative rating," which compares the mean grade that its candidates achieve in that subject's national examination with their mean grade in all other subjects. Analysis of 1997 Year-11 examination results demonstrates that the relative rating is…

This article reports on the entry by the political opinion journal Washington Monthly in ranking U.S. colleges and universities. The journal purported to rank colleges on the contributions of their graduates to the nation. If it stays in the game for the long haul and modifies its rankings--as U.S. News seems to do annually--in a serious attempt…

In a repeated testing paradigm, list items receiving item-specific processing are more likely to be recovered across successive tests (item gains), whereas items receiving relational processing are likely to be forgotten progressively less on successive tests. Moreover, analysis of cumulative-recall curves has shown that item-specific processing…

This study examines the relationship between high-stakes school accountability and its effects upon student test scores and school policies. The authors seek to understand the extent to which accountability sanctions and incentives for the poorest-performing schools in Florida explain subsequent changes in school practices and policies as well as…

This article contains an analysis of a component of a large-scale reform effort in an urban school district that entailed placing high school students identified as underperforming in literacy in separate classes aimed at accelerating their learning. The relationship between students academic performance and social backgrounds, school…

Argues that we must become critical thinkers about critical thinking. Issues addressed include: (1) knowledge vs. information; (2) substance vs. form; (3) learning and meaning making; (4) affective and cognitive engagement; (5) cultural pluralism and a community of learners; and (6) accountability and assessment. (SR)

Examined the role of subordinate age in performance evaluations. Results found that supervisors rated older subordinates lower than younger subordinates doing the same job; differences between self-ratings of performance and supervisory ratings seemed to be a function of the subordinate's age; and a significant age by performance interaction was…

A study designed to replicate work by Kirby and Das (1977) studying differences between learning disabled (102) and normal children (99) essentially supported the earlier research in terms of factor structure and relationship of simultaneous and successive processing to reading and IQ. In both groups, structures and relationships were similar.…