Some form of a short interrupted time series (ITS) is often used to evaluate state and national programs. An ITS design with a single treatment group assumes that the pretest functional form can be validly estimated and extrapolated into the postintervention period where it provides a valid counterfactual. This assumption is problematic. Ambiguous…

The technical complexities and sheer size of international large-scale assessment (LSA) databases often cause hesitation on the part of the applied researcher interested in analyzing them. Further, inappropriate choice or application of statistical methods is a common problem in applied research using these databases. This article serves as a…

Documenting the design and data analysis procedures behind the 1992 Trial State Assessment in reading, this book also provides insight into the rationale behind the technical decisions made about the program. Chapters in the book are: (1) "Overview: The Design, Implementation, and Analysis of the 1992 Trial State Assessment Program in…

This appendix accompanies "Gaining Ground in the Middle Grades: Why Some Schools Do Better. A Large-Scale Study of Middle Grades Practices and Student Outcomes. Initial Research Report." This appendix focuses on the findings and domain comparisons of the study. This appendix contains the following: (1) Decision Rules; (2) Full Set of…

Nonresponse issues are investigated for the base year (1988) survey of the United States Department of Education's National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), a national probability sample of middle schools and eighth-grade students in the spring of 1988. The total eighth-grade enrollment for the NELS:88 sample of schools was 203,002;…

Containing the results of Oregon's second statewide analytical writing assessment, this document summarizes the procedures used to evaluate the writing skills of 4,567 eighth graders from 55 schools and analyzes the results. Following an introduction that includes comments from the scoring team, chapter 1 presents a brief history of writing…

This study was part of a larger study investigating the influence of group collaboration during a group assessment on performance of the group and subsequent widespread performances. This study compared the verbal interactions of students while they completed a science assessment in small collaborative groups with their performance on the same…

This report documents the process undertaken to produce scales in three cognitive domains: knowing, applying, and reasoning. Included are the final scales showing differences among countries, as well as within countries. TIMSS 2003 is the third and most recently completed round of IEA's Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, a very…

This volume describes the technical aspects of TIMSS 2003 and summarizes the main activities involved in the development of the data collection instruments, the data collection itself, and the analysis and reporting of the data. The thirteen chapters contained herein are: (1) Overview of TIMSS 2003 (Michael O. Martin and Ina V. S. Mullis); (2)…