Schools in England and Wales since the late 1980s have been compared in terms of their performances in public examinations and standardised test scores in the form of "school league tables", with Wales ceasing to produce these after 2001. One of the factors related to performance in examinations is the choice of the examination board,…

Increasing linguistic diversity in classrooms has led researchers to examine the validity and fairness of standardized achievement tests, specifically concerning whether test score interpretations are free of bias and score use is fair for all students. This study examined whether mathematics achievement test items that contain complex language…

The Test of German as a Foreign Language (TestDaF) plays a critical role as a standardized test of German language proficiency. Developed and administered by the Society for Academic Study Preparation and Test Development (g.a.s.t.), TestDaF was launched in 2001 and has experienced persistent annual growth, with more than 44,000 test takers in…

A molecule of the month extra credit assignment was introduced to a didactic introductory pharmacology and medicinal chemistry course for first-year pharmacy students. The structure of a clinically approved drug molecule was presented to students each month of the course after the first month. Students would answer questions pertaining to the name…

The National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in Australia is a series of literacy and numeracy tests that are used for purposes of school comparison. This paper argues that a key question for this use lies in whether or not this is a reasonable, or valid, use of the test data. Using Kane's argumentative approach to validity,…

Purpose: Performance on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), among the most widely used global screens of adult cognitive status, is affected by demographic variables including age, education, and ethnicity. This study extends prior research by examining the specific effects of bilingualism on MMSE performance. Method: Sixty independent…

Students with disabilities face challenges to academic success that can be exacerbated by the effects of poverty. In this study, Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) was used to analyze the effects of socio-economic status, social capital, and threats to safety on literacy test scores for students with disabilities. Results of the analysis indicate…

A new college admission policy will be implemented in Taiwan in 2022. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between admission criteria and college success. Data was obtained from the Taiwan Higher Education Database; a sample size of 8443 students from 156 universities was used in this study. By using the structural equation…

Background/Context: To enhance postsecondary completion and minimize equity gaps, researchers have focused on defining, measuring, and developing students' college readiness, or the preparation required to persist in higher education. While this work has been useful to identify the ingredients of postsecondary success, the emphasis on individual…

Retention of knowledge from school courses has long been a concern of educators and administrators. Bahrick (1979) offered the general sentiment that "much of the information acquired in classrooms is lost soon after final examinations" (p. 297). This negative outcome is exhibited in curriculum that feature course sequences, where…

Imagine Math® is a standards-aligned, adaptive, interactive online mathematics program designed to supplement in-class instruction for students. This evaluation report examined the fidelity of implementation of Imagine Math® and the associations between its use and student achievement in Houston Independent School District (HISD) secondary schools…

This study leverages naturally occurring lotteries for oversubscribed Boston Public Schools prekindergarten program sites between 2007 and 2011, for 3,182 children (M = 4.5 years old) to estimate the impacts of winning a first choice lottery and enrolling in Boston prekindergarten versus losing a first choice lottery and not enrolling on…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the size of a public school district or the amount allocated per-pupil in the state of Texas made a difference in student academic outcomes for special education students. The data evaluated in the study were the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) Algebra I score and the Public…

The purpose of this study was to gauge the degree to which selected NWEA MAP Growth assessments are aligned to the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) and the extent to which MAP Growth reports can be used by school divisions to gauge student achievement relative to grade level and to identify learning gaps. The study was delimited to four MAP…

This report presents Advanced Placement (AP) examination participation and performance results in Texas and the United States for the 2019-20 school year. The results are for public and nonpublic schools combined and are presented by race/ethnicity and gender. [For the 2018-2019 report, see ED604831.]