Since the standards-based assessment practices required by the No Child Left Behind legislation, almost all students in the United States are "labeled" according to their performance on educational achievement tests. In spite of their widespread use in reporting test results, research on how achievement level labels are perceived by…

This article examines whether the way that PISA models item outcomes in mathematics affects the validity of its country rankings. As an alternative to PISA methodology, a two-parameter logistic model is applied to PISA mathematics item data from Italy and Spain for the year 2009. In the estimation procedure, item difficulty and dispersion…

This study investigated a decade of candidates' performances in NECO-SSCE mathematics in NIGERIA. A total of 9266459 valid results were collated for the study and analyzed for zones in the country. Already validated results of NECO for 2000 to 2009 were used for the study. Three research questions guided the conduct of the study. Results showed…

This study was relational, non-experimental, explanatory, and cross-sectional in nature, using quantitative methods to explain the influence of student, staff, and school independent variables on 6th, 7th , and 8th grade student achievement in both Language Arts and Mathematics on the 2011 NJ ASK. The variable of interest was the length of the…

In this study, we examine how the standardizing effects of federal and state education policies in the United States reflect particular ways of understanding the structure and function of education and schooling. This understanding impacts how policies affect schools and those who work and depend upon them. We argue that the disparity between how…

There is no comprehensive database of U.S. district-level test scores that is comparable across states. We describe and evaluate a method for constructing such a database. First, we estimate linear, reliability-adjusted linking transformations from state test score scales to the scale of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). We…

By applying multilevel models with random effects, the authors reviewed and synthesized findings from 30 studies that were published in the last 20 years exploring the relationship between the Educational Testing Service Major Field Test for a Bachelor's Degree in Business (MFTB) and related factors. The results suggest that MFTB scores correlated…

This paper reports how the context in which a mathematics item is embedded impacts on students' performance. The performance of Year 10 students on four PISA items was compared with performance on variants with more familiar contexts. Performance was not better when they solved items with more familiar contexts but there was some evidence that…

Nurse education programs are implementing standardized assessments without evaluating their effectiveness. Graduates of associate degree nursing programs continue to be unsuccessful with licensure examinations, despite standardized testing and stronger admission criteria. This problem is also prevalent for LPN-to-RN education programs due to a…

The defectiveness of the effectiveness of the Hungarian general education revealed in the PISA survey appears in the higher education as well. The "Introduction to Informatics" subject has one of the lowest exam results among the students of the College of Nyíregyháza majoring in Computer Program Designer and Teacher of Computer Science.…

How much can late schooling investments close racial and ethnic skill gaps? We investigate this question by exploiting the large differences in completed schooling that arise among teenagers with birthdays near school-entry cutoff dates. We estimate that an additional year of high school raises the Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT) scores of…

Six anomalies in achievement test scores encountered by the Austin Independent School District are described. These include crossing gaps with uninterpolated medians; total group median declines while all subgroups' medians rise; outlying total percentiles; percentile and grade equivalent growth antithesis; same grade equivalent earning a…

Uses data from the Second International Science Study to examine the effects of school entry age, grade, age, and enrollment ratios on science achievement among tenth and twelfth graders in Papua New Guinea. Compares findings with those from Thailand, the Philippines, and industrialized countries. Contains 13 references. (SV)

Findings from a study that examined the hypothesis that published standardized assessment scores would influence enrollment in Maine high schools are presented in this paper. The hypothesis was derived from the Bush Administration's assertion that regular educational assessment would influence parental school choice. The Maine educational system…

Three studies related to group interpretation of the subskills tested by the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) were the focus of this project. These were the Impact Study, Teachers' Predictions of Student Performance on Subskills of Mathematics, and Relationships between the Results of ITBS. Mathematics Subtests and Stanford Diagnostic Mathematics…