"Excellence gaps" are the disparities in advanced academic performance that exist between student groups. These gaps have important implications for both academic equity and American economic competitiveness, as the most lucrative jobs often go to those who perform at the highest levels. Although considerable work has evaluated how and…

This paper examines national gaps and trends in geography achievement in eighth grade from 1994 to 2018. Statistical models comprising student- and school-level variables were developed to predict achievement using data provided by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Although there were statistically significant relationships…

Disrupted schooling can heavily impact the amount of education pupils receive. Starting in early June of 2011 a huge social outburst of pupil protests, walk-outs, riots and school occupations called the Chilean Winter caused more than 8 million of lost school days. Within a matter of days, riots reached the national level with hundreds of…

Speaking in front of the Education Writers Association, Secretary Betsy DeVos said that decades of reform efforts and increased social spending, both inside and outside of schools, "hasn't ultimately improved anything for any students, particularly not for the most vulnerable students." This seems to be a standard refrain from DeVos, and…

Though measures of long-term academic performance trends are valuable to education policy analysts and policymakers, they have been hard to come by at the state level, where most education policy is made. Such data are either nonexistent prior to 1990 or are unrepresentative of statewide student populations. A continuous series of state mean SAT…

South Africa participated in TIMSS from 1995 to 2015. Over these two decades, some positive changes have been reported on the aggregated mathematics performance patterns of South African learners. This paper focuses on the achievement patterns of South Africa's high-performing Grade 9 learners (n = 3378) in comparison with similar subsamples of…

As the U.S. population has become increasingly diverse--a continuing trend led by children--there has been an accompanying rise in the number of children who grow up hearing and learning more than one language. Dual language learners represent an important asset for our nation's future, since those who have fluency in more than one language have…

Only 35 percent of U.S. 8th graders were identified as proficient in math by the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). According to the most recent calculations available, the United States stands at the 32nd rank in math among nations in the industrialized world. In reading, the U.S. ranks 17th in the world (see "Are U.S.…

Every country strives for its students to have advanced achievement in some way, shape, or form. But too often, competence is a higher policy priority than excellence, and shrinking minimum competency gaps is a higher priority than closing excellence gaps. In this brief, educational excellence is defined as the percent of students who meet or…

In the past several decades, Boston has been a proving ground for new strategies such as mayoral control, charter schools, and expanded access to early childhood education. Located in a state known for rigorous standards and accountability, Boston Public Schools (BPS) has consistently ranked among the top-performing large public school districts…

This document provides an overview of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what students in the United States know and can do in various subjects. NAEP serves a different role than state assessments. States have their own unique assessments which are…

It is generally expected that funds invested in public instruction will strengthen pupil achievement. Similarly, it is expected that enrollments of young children in preschool education should lead to higher achievement. In a trend analysis, we examined three variables as predictors of grade 8 achievement in 2007: (1) state expenditures per…

This article aims to investigate variations in science achievement for secondary school students across the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) assessments and to examine the relations of several student- and school-level factors with achievement. The data were obtained from 5,577, 5,314, and 4,466 Malaysian eighth…

This study coded the grade level of 171 items from the number and algebra strands of the eighth-grade NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) test. The Common Core standards in math were used as the coding rubric. Items from the number strand range from the first to eighth grade, with a median level of fifth grade and mean of 5.2. Items…

The purpose of this study was to simultaneously examine relationships between teacher quality and instructional time and mathematics and science achievement of 8th grade cohorts in 18 advanced and developing economies. In addition, the study examined changes in mathematics and science performance across the two groups of economies over time using…