Abstract Research has demonstrated girls outperform boys on conventional literacy tests. The present studies concern gender differences on computerised educational tests. Seventy-one children were tested using LASS Secondary and a set of seven conventional measures. No significant gender differences were found on any of the LASS Secondary modules,…

"How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement" estimates the effects on student achievement of attending a New York City charter school rather than a traditional public school and investigates the characteristics of charter schools associated with the most positive effects on achievement. Because the report relies on an…

This study explores the research question: Does the promotion system in Taiwan reward faculty research productivity? By conducting event history analyses, I have demonstrated that the simple answer to the question is "yes." After controlling for the effects of demography, education, institutions and seniority, the discrete-time logit…

The study of federal education initiatives that takes place over multiple years in multiple settings often calls for aggregating and comparing data-in particular, student achievement data-across a broad set of schools, districts, and states. The need to track the trends over time is complicated by the fact that the data from the different schools,…

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…

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)

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 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…

Because 3rd Grade Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) scores have a direct impact on promotion, the results for that grade level are released early by the State. When the FCAT results for 3rd Grade were released in May 2007, many people were troubled. Over 80% of the elementary schools in the Miami-Dade School District showed a decrease…

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…

In this technical report, data are presented on the predictive and concurrent relation between various student demographic variables (gender, race/ethnicity, special education status, Title 1 status, English language learning status, and economic disadvantage) and three reading easyCBMs (passage reading fluency, vocabulary, and multiple-choice…

The importance of the beliefs and attitudes of teachers and building-level administrators in achieving school reform has come to be widely acknowledged. As University of Wisconsin professor Kent Peterson put it: "You can implement a good-quality improvement plan and knowledgeable, data-driven decision making, but if the [staff] doesn't…

This initial study focused on high school students' experiences about their understanding of, and abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry, two foci emphasized by the National Science Education Standards in the strand on "science as inquiry". The research method consisted of Likert-scale survey with space provided for students' comments about…

The purpose of this report is to provide descriptive data regarding the test scores of Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) students in grades 4, 8 and 10 in reading, math, and science, as reported to the School Choice Demonstration Project 2008-2009. The tables, graphs, and histograms presented in this paper provide a snapshot of these…

Innovations in undergraduate medical education, such as integration of disciplines and problem based learning, have given rise to concerns about students' knowledge of anatomy. This article originated from several studies investigating the knowledge of anatomy of students at the eight Dutch medical schools. The studies showed that undergraduate…