This paper evaluates a 20-item assessment of citizenship literacy in an adult sample comprising 179 persons of English-speaking and non-English speaking background. The results indicated that the assessment was internally consistent and that as expected it distinguished English-speaking from non-English speaking participants. The pattern of…

The pressing need to improve achievement in American schools is widely recognized. In "Tests, Testing, and Genuine School Reform," Herbert J. Walberg draws on scientific studies of tests and their uses to inform citizens, educators, and policy makers about well-established principles of testing, current problems, and promising evidence-based…

Professional development--formal in-service training to upgrade the content knowledge and pedagogical skills of teachers--is widely viewed as an important means of improving teaching and learning. While many interventions "include" professional development, professional development was the central intervention of the two recent research and…

In this era of accountability-by-numbers, the elevated status accorded to large-scale external assessments such as the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is symptomatic of a trend towards data-driven policy initiatives in education, and the need for regular sources of outcome data to constantly feed narrow indicators of…

Instructions for the Matrix Reasoning Test (MRT) of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition were modified by explicitly stating that the subtest was untimed or that a per-item time limit would be imposed. The MRT was administered within one of four conditions: with (a) standard administration instructions, (b) explicit instructions…

Results on the PIRLS test in 2006 make it clear that South African educators need to examine the way in which they teach literacy in the Foundation phase. While the test gives a fair indication of what our children cannot do, it is less clear about what they can do. Mastery of decoding, for example, is assumed and children are tested on their…

The release of School Grades by the State of Florida in the late summer of 2010 created quite a stir. Over 500 elementary schools all over the state dropped at least one grade level. Among those schools that experienced drops, the Reading Gains and Mathematics Gains components seemed especially low. Some of the historically best performing schools…

Recently, much attention has focused on the number of schools in the nation failing to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in raising student achievement under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The Obama Administration has projected a dramatic increase in this number as 2014--the year when 100% of students are expected to score proficient on…

When one compares summary FCAT data from the Miami-Dade district to other major districts in the State, it appears that student performance in Miami-Dade district is generally lower. However, overall summary data can be deceiving. Part of the reason is that the subgroups that make up each district have distinctly different success rates. One can…

The present study validated the underlying domains that comprise the mentoring experiences of students attending a Hispanic Serving Institution. Mentoring was hypothesized to comprise four interrelated components as measured by the College Student Mentoring Scale. "T" test results indicated different groups of students received similar mentoring…

More than 1 million people have watched the online video in which Salman Khan--a charming MIT math whiz, Harvard Business School graduate, and former Boston hedge-fund analyst--explains how he began tutoring his cousins in math by posting short lessons for them on YouTube. Other people began watching the lessons and sending Khan adulatory notes.…

Assessing the comparability of different groups is an issue facing many researchers and evaluators in a variety of settings. Commonly, null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is incorrectly used to demonstrate comparability when a non-significant result is found. This is problematic because a failure to find a difference between groups is not…

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…

Using data from the Digest of Educational Statistics, this article argues that an intergenerational comparison is a more productive, progressive method to interpret data used to gauge the achievement gap. It applies this method by comparing the academic achievement scores and educational outcomes of African Americans over a nearly 70-year period,…

An investigation of factors which differentiate between university lecturers in relation to publication output is reported. The study drew on data from lecturers working full-time at two large Australian universities. Measures of research publication output were used to select two groups of lecturers (N[subscript 1] = 119; N[subscript 2] = 119);…