While international comparisons such as those provided by PISA may be meaningful in terms of overall judgements about the performance of educational systems, caution is needed in terms of more fine-grained judgements. In particular it is argued that the results of PISA to draw conclusions about the quality of instruction in different systems is…

This three-year comparative study investigated the impact of the Reading First (RF) Program on student performance as measured by statewide-mandated English Language Arts (ELA) assessment programs. A matching procedure was used where 3 RF schools and 3 non-RF schools from two rural school districts in north Louisiana were matched. The ELA test…

In this article, after describing one approach for teaching critical thinking (CT) that was in place at Baker University from 1990 to 2008, the author describes their experience assessing CT using three standardized exams and shows why the choice of a standardized CT test can be problematic and the results misleading. These results can be…

This study examined the average effects of schools' third through fifth grade gifted programming policy in mathematics and reading on overall school achievement, on gifted students' achievement and academic attitudes and on nongifted students' achievement and academic attitudes. Data and results represent a broad, national look at school…

This paper is a comprehensive meta-analysis of over 20 years of work-family conflict research. A series of path analyses were conducted to compare and contrast existing work-family conflict models, as well as a new model we developed which integrates and synthesizes current work-family theory and research. This new model accounted for 40% of the…

ACT examined the international competitiveness of college and career ready standards in the policy research report, Affirming the Goal: Is College and Career Readiness an Internationally Competitive Standard? In this study, ACT performed a linking analysis to identify the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) scores in reading and…

This article presents the results of a study focused on the issue of how proctored testing affects student test scores in a formal Intermediate Algebra course setting. The study follows a model of assessment in which students in one group have taken two of their five unit exams as proctored tests along with a proctored comprehensive final exam,…

This article describes a study of the two most popular plagiarism-detection software platforms available on today's market--Turnitin (http://www.turnitin.com/static/index.html) and SafeAssign (http://www.safeassign.com/). After a brief discussion of plagiarism's relevance to librarians, the authors examine plagiarism-detection methodology and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between early mathematical skills and cognitive processing abilities for two samples of children in Italy (N = 40) and the Netherlands (N = 59) who completed both a cognitive test that measures Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive (PASS) processing and an early mathematical…

The "WVEB" Mathematics Project is a collaborative program offering college-level courses to high school students. Results of a matched-pair study comparing on- and off-campus students in algebra indicate that both sections show a significant gain in score on the math "ACT" test, with no difference in gain found between…

Most developed societies have become increasingly multicultural and as such their educational institutions are required to educate increasingly diverse student cohorts. International students differ greatly in their education and language backgrounds and tend to fall into different age groups as well. It is a challenging task to accommodate all…

Improving comprehension skills is vital to building cognitive skills. Reading and literacy skills enable youth to gather information and create knowledge from various sources, and then to consider solutions to problems in and about their lives from both a cognitive and a creative standpoint. By implementing disciplinary reading strategies in the…

Many postsecondary institutions currently administer standardized tests of general college outcomes; more than a quarter of Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) member institutions do so. Using standardized tests for accountability purposes has been contentious mainly because these tests do not measure every important…

A study was carried out to explore whether or not there is a relationship between children's reading ability and text-messaging behaviour. The aims of this study were to compare good and poor readers on their amount of usage of mobile phones, the frequency and type of text devices they used, and the speed at which they could read messages in…

To the extent that Americans look abroad for lessons about education, they primarily concern themselves with wealthy nations that perform well on international tests like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In this paper, the author argues that Americans…