Effective science instruction and associated student learning is reliant upon a strong foundation of teacher content knowledge. This study of the "Praxis?" General Science Content Knowledge Test from May 2006 to June 2016 investigates content knowledge of 28,688 general science teacher candidates. Examinees performed well on "Life…

Perceived failure in academic performance can lead to differing outcomes for students. Depending on the coping strategies that they choose, students may improve or worsen their performance. This study examined the relationship between affective components and coping strategies in college students' responses to perceived academic failure and their…

Chulalongkorn University Language Institute (CULI) test was developed as a local standardised test of English for professional and international communication. To ensure that the CULI test fulfils its intended purposes, this study employed Kane's argument-based validation and Rasch measurement approaches to construct the validity argument for the…

The present study explored the comparability in performance scores between the computer-delivered and face-to-face modes for the two speaking tests in the Vietnamese Standardized Test of English Proficiency (VSTEP) (the VSTEP.2 and VSTEP.3-5 Speaking tests) according to Vietnam's Six-Level Foreign Language Proficiency Framework (VNFLPF) and test…

This study investigated whether students' gender, prior achievement, and socioeconomic status (SES) moderated the magnitude of teacher expectation effects on students' English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) achievement. A sample of 30 university teachers and 845 first-year undergraduate students from EFL classrooms participated in the study. Data on…

The transition from secondary to tertiary education varies from country to country. In many countries, secondary school is concluded with high-stakes, national exams, or high-stakes entry tests are used for admissions to tertiary education. In other countries, secondary-school grade point average (GPA) is the determining factor. In the…

This Focus On uses data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) to showcase that, as a group, recipients of physics bachelor's degrees tend to do well on two prominent standardized tests for medical school and law school admission. Although only a small percent of the physics bachelor's…

Numerous studies have demonstrated that social and emotional skills (SE skills) can predict academic achievement, including grades and test scores, and prior research at ACT has shown that stronger SE skills are associated with higher ACT scores. However, despite the abundant evidence that SE skills are beneficial for students in general, less is…

The impact of test-optional college admissions policies depends on whether applicants act strategically in disclosing test scores. We analyze individual applicants' standardized test scores and disclosure behavior to 50 major US colleges for entry in fall 2021, when COVID-19 prompted widespread adoption of test-optional policies. Applicants…

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the delivery of education as many occupational therapy (OT) programs temporarily transitioned to remote learning. The purpose of this article is to describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy (NBCOT) pass rates. A mixed methods research design was used…

This paper estimates the causal effects of enrollment in one of five oversubscribed high-quality Los Angeles charter schools using a lottery design. Enrolling in a charter school increased eleventh-grade standardized test scores and enrollment and persistence in four-year colleges substantially, but had no effect on high school GPA. Charter…

This study was guided by the question, how do we understand the multiplicative reasoning of upper high school students and use that to give insight to their performance on a standardized test? After administering a partial ACT assessment to a class of high school students, we identified students to make comparisons between low and high scoring…

Community colleges are under ongoing pressure to increase the success of students placed into developmental courses; while many reforms focus on the length of course sequences, there is also attention on how students are assessed and placed. Studies of these assessment and placement (A&P) methods focus primarily on predictive validity; one…

The charter school movement encompasses many school models. In Massachusetts in the 2010's, the site of our study, urban charter schools primarily used "No Excuses" practices, whereas nonurban charters had greater model variety. Using randomized admissions lotteries, we estimate the impact of charter schools by locality on college…

Before nursing graduates can practice as a registered nurse, they must successfully pass the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN). Low first-time pass rates on this high-stakes test can cause concern for multiple stakeholders including graduate nurses, nursing programs, health care organizations, and society. The…