Many studies of immigrant students in education focus on a single point in time. As a result, explanations of the performance of immigrant and minority students tend to be static, emphasising enduring socioeconomic, school or cultural factors. This article examines the dynamics of the differences in educational outcomes between immigrant and…

According to a new study of Milwaukee public schools, student achievement has benefited from voucher-based school competition. A novel method, using geocoding, was proposed for measuring the degree of competition within the city of Milwaukee and, in turn, for determining whether such competition has increased or decreased the achievement of public…

This review examines the recently released Thomas P. Fordham Institute report, "Education Olympics: The Games in Review." Published just after the completion of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Education Olympics strategically parallels the international competition by awarding gold, silver and bronze medals to top performing countries based on…

Which children are most at risk of experiencing a Matthew effect in reading? We investigated this question using population-based methodology. First, we identified children entering kindergarten on socio-demographic factors (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status) known to index the relative risks and resources available to them as…

The process of examination marking is complex, requiring examiners to engage in a variety of cognitive operations. While consideration has been given to marking practices in a few specific contexts, those of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examiners have yet to receive serious attention. This study's aims, therefore, were: first,…

Using fiscal data provided by the finance office of the school district, and personnel data obtained from the California Basic Education Data System maintained by the California Department of Education (CDE), the authors present analyses to provide a foundation for local policymakers that may be used to assess whether there are inequities in the…

The teacher's task of assigning letter grades to students and the public's interpretation of them can be perplexing. Does the student's grade represent the level of achievement, the gain in achievement, or some combination of the two? Is the student's effort included in the grade, or are high achievers given good marks regardless of effort? Are…

Students at California's public colleges are doing about as well or better than students at similar institutions nationally, but there is significant need to improve success. Based on the five accountability framework reports presented to the California Postsecondary Education Commission for measuring student success, this report assesses major…

"Choice and Education across the States," published by the Heartland Institute, is an advocacy document that assigns letter grades to states based on the extensiveness of each state's school choice system. The report asserts, based on a faulty use of past research, that an increase in school choice will strengthen accountability and improve…

This report, part of the "Challenge to Lead" education goals series, documents the continued progress of SREB [Southern Regional Education Board] states in preparing early grades students for success in the middle grades--and beyond. It analyzes scores on state assessments and the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) and…

The Cato Institute report examines international evidence on outcomes from public and private education. The paper makes three key claims: private schools outperform public schools in "the overwhelming majority of cases"; private schools' superiority is greatest in countries where the education system has more market features; and…

Shanghai Jiao Tong University has published on the Internet an Academic Ranking of World Universities that has attracted worldwide attention. Institutions are ranked according to academic or research performance and ranking indicators include major international awards, highly cited researchers in important fields, articles published in selected…

Data collected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has consistently shown public school students performing more poorly than those in private schools. But when a more sophisticated assessment model was applied to recent NAEP data for students in grades 4 and 8, the achievement gap narrowed considerably and reversed for…

Global university rankings have cemented the notion of a world university market arranged in a single "league table" for comparative purposes and have given a powerful impetus to intranational and international competitive pressures in the sector. Both the research rankings by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the composite rankings by…

In this article we examine empirical evidence on the criterion, predictive, transfer, and fairness aspects of validity of a large-scale language arts performance assessment, referred to as the Performance Assignment (PA). We use multilevel models to avoid biased inferences that might result from the naturally nested data. Specifically, we examine…