The purpose of this study is to examine ways in which school principals conduct observations of the practice of teaching Turkish and math in lower secondary (middle school, ages 10-14) in Turkey. Using a multicase qualitative research method, this study focuses on 12 secondary school teachers and six principals as they engage in observational…

While most educators assume that not all students try their best on achievement tests, no current research examines if behaviors associated with low test effort, like rapidly guessing on test items, affect teacher value-added estimates. In this article, we examined the prevalence of rapid guessing to determine if this behavior varied by grade,…

"Make It Count" was a large scale, government-funded, project aimed at improving the mathematics learning of Indigenous students. NAPLAN Numeracy test results were used as one measure of the effect of the program. In this paper we report on the performance on these tests of Indigenous students in schools involved in the project. Group…

The U.S. Department of Education released regulations governing the development of alternate assessments for students with persistent learning problems who are eligible for Modified Academic Achievement Standards (MAAS) in 2007. To date, state regular assessments or alternate assessments based on Alternate Academic Achievement Standards have not…

This study compares the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 Mathematics results with the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2003 Grade 8 mathematics results, using country mean scores for 22 participants of both studies. It is found that Western countries generally performed better in PISA than in…

Self-regulated learning includes the use of a set of strategies for planning, monitoring, and self-evaluating students' efforts toward reaching specific learning goals. This study examined the extent to which explicit self-regulated learning strategy instruction impacted regular eighth grade students' learning behaviors and mathematics…

Discusses the results of the 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) of secondary school students on probability and statistics. The most recent results indicate that more attention is being given to data analysis, statistics, and probability, and that student performance on these items is gradually improving compared to the 1990…

This book reports teaching practices in mathematics in seven countries from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 video study. A detailed description of the methods in the mathematics portion of the study is presented in an accompanying technical report from an international perspective. Contexts of the lessons, the…

This document concerns what teachers learned from students responses to the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) tests in 1995. Teacher responses and comments are presented in the following categories: (1) "Look How Far We've Come!" (identifies areas of improvement in student performance); (2) "Perceptions"…

This study was conducted to determine whether the symbolic form of achievement test items influences student performance and whether teachers' use of different symbolic forms during instruction influences estimates of student achievement. The analyses conducted to examine these issues used student achievement test data and teacher responses to…

This publication is a distillation of the most salient, most often repeated observations and recommendations of Maryland teacher-test scorers on their experiences scoring student responses to the Maryland School Performance Assessment (MSPAP) test in 1994. Feedback is organized into perceptions about what would be pertinent to share with other…