The accountability movement has created tensions among key actors at institutions of higher education in the U.S. in recent years. As such, a need existed to examine the lived experiences that influenced faculty (n =6) in the College of Agriculture (COA) at [State] University as they engaged in various forms of assessment to evaluate student…

COVID-19 upended schooling across the United States, but with what consequences for the state-level institutions that drive most education policy? This paper reports findings on two related research questions. First, what were the most important ways state government education policymakers changed schools and schooling from the moment they began…

Education officials have long hoped that the statewide academic assessments most students take each year could be used not only for accountability but also to guide instruction. Congress established the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) program in 2015 to help address this goal, offering up to seven states temporary flexibility…

This appendix volume supplements "Evaluating the Federal Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority: Early Implementation and Progress of State Efforts to Develop New Statewide Academic Assessments. Evaluation Report. NCEE 2023-004" analyzing the early progress of the first five assessment systems participating in the Innovative…

Recent reviews of automated writing evaluation systems indicate lack of uniformity in the purpose, design, and assessment of such systems. Our work lies at the nexus of critical themes arising from these reviews. We describe our work on eRevise, an automated writing evaluation system focused on elementary students' text-based evidence-use. eRevise…

Coherence among components of an instructional system is key to changing teachers' instructional practices in standards-based reforms. Coherence involves working across traditional silos--or system components (e.g., curriculum, professional learning, assessment)--to integrate components to avoid fragmentation of experiences for educators and…

Background: In response to the effort to increase minority enrollment in college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, STEM summer bridge programs were created to help minorities with the transition from high school to college with the long-term goal of increasing the diversity of professionals in STEM. The goal of this…

Preparing pre-service students to teach agricultural mechanics is a difficult task due to the career pathway including a great variety of topics (Byrd et al., 2015). This study examined the trend in requirements in 1862 land-grant universities for number of courses, course credit hours, and course topics related to agricultural mechanics, as well…

A mismatch remains between the skills employers seek in new hires and the skills applicants possess. This study encompassed an evaluation of the impacts of the Quality Enhancement Program on students' work readiness competencies, including oral, written, and digital communication skills, at Nunez Community College. The Quality Enhancement Program…

Purpose: This research note illustrates the effects of video data with nonsquare pixels on the pixel-based measures obtained from videofluoroscopic swallow studies (VFSS). Method: Six pixel-based distance and area measures were obtained from two different videoflouroscopic study units; both yielding videos with nonsquare pixels with different…

In higher education classrooms, teacher-centered instruction remains the dominant learning approach. However, as calls have increased for university graduates to demonstrate the ability to solve complex problems, active learning strategies such as flipped classrooms and team-based learning (TBL), have emerged as popular approaches to ensure…

Spurred by "Race to the Top," efforts to improve teacher evaluation systems have provided states with an opportunity to get teacher evaluation right. Despite the fact that a core reform area of "Race to the Top" was the use of teacher evaluation to provide on-going and meaningful feedback for instructional decision making, we…

Since March 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has placed unprecedented stresses on the public education system in the United States. At every level, from the U.S. Department of Education down through local districts and individual schools, the pandemic has presented formidable challenges. Many of these challenges have been…

Micro-credentials are increasingly being adopted across a variety of industries and countries, including the kindergarten through grade 12 education system in the United States, as a way to identify workers with specific skills, knowledge, and competencies. This report presents the results of a study conducted by RAND researchers who investigated…

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a school voucher initiative offering publicly-funded scholarships to students from economically-disadvantaged families to attend participating private schools. Experimental evaluations of the program report large initial negative effects of LSP scholarship usage on standardized assessments after one year…