Recent trends in achievement test scores among elementary and secondary school students in Iowa are examined. Form 7 of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) was used to measure the achievement of students in grades 3 and 7; and Form X-7 of the Iowa Tests of Educational Development (ITED) was used for 11th graders. These grade levels were chosen…

The family of Weibull distributions was investigated as a model for the distributions of response times for items in computer-based criterion-referenced tests. The fit of these distributions were, with a few exceptions, good to excellent according to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. For a few relatively simple items, the two-parameter gamma…

Forming a sequence covering the various aspects of the simplex model, four articles are presented here under the following titles: "A Simplex Model for Analyzing Academic Growth", "Analyzing Ratings With Correlated Intrajudge Measurement Errors", "The Correlation of States With Gain", and "The Reliability of…

Steele and Aronson (1995) found that the performance of African-American subjects on test items portrayed as a problem-solving task, in a laboratory experiment, was adversely affected when they were asked about their ethnicity. This outcome was attributed to "stereotype threat". Performance was disrupted by the subjects' concerns about…

This study investigated the impact on ethnic, language, and gender groups of a new kind of essay prompt type intended for use with the new SAT®. The study also generated estimates of the reliability of scores obtained using the prompts examined. To examine the impact of a new prompt type, random samples of eleventh-grade students in 49…

This annual report examines trends in Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) data for Maryland vis-a-vis national trends. Major findings include the following: (1) composite SAT scores for Maryland students trail the national average for the first time since 1982; (2) composite SAT scores of African-Americans in Maryland have consistently trailed those…

The main aim of this study was to determine the opinions of the undergraduate students and faculty members on factors that affect student learning and academic achievement. The sub aims of this study were to: (1) Develop a mean rank ordering of the 23 dimensions affecting learning, for both the students and faculty, and determine the similarities…

Project Information Packages (PIPs) are informative kits that describe remedial educational programs and contain instructions for installing the projects in a new site. Six such PIPs were evaluated using a norm-referenced procedure applied to standardized test scores. Pretest scores were compared to posttest scores which were calculated according…

This paper reports on a study of the impact of extensive reading (ER) on the language proficiency of a group of Vietnamese government officials studying English. Two questions were of interest. First, we wanted to examine if ER could be successfully implemented with adult second language learners beyond traditional student age. Secondly, we were…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of curricular (textbook, revised, and differentiated) and grouping (whole, between, and within-class) practices on intermediate students' achievement in mathematics. A pretest-posttest, quasi-experimental design using a stratified random sample of 31 teachers and their students (N = 645) was…

This Policy Brief describes and explains patterns of access to schools in South Africa. It outlines policy and legislation on access to education and provides a statistical analysis of access, vulnerability and exclusion. It is based on findings from the Country Analytic Review on Educational Access in South Africa (Motala et al, 2007) [ED508808]…

Pupils at three elementary schools and one junior high school among Area 1 inner-city schools of St. Louis Missouri, were identified as scoring well below norms on standardized tests. An effort to change the educational programs at these schools netted financial support and the creation of Project SHAL (named for the schools involved). Inservice…

This material provides a discussion of the construction and analysis of tests prepared for classroom use by teachers. The initial discussion is concerned with the purposes of evaluation and the specification of objectives. This is followed by an examination of theoretical and practical considerations in planning a test. The material on test item…

A procedure is demonstrated for constructing tables showing, for each score on a commercial reading achievement test, the percentage of real-world materials that the testee is likely to comprehend with at least a criterion level of proficiency, the percentages of students in a local or national sample who can competently comprehend a given…

This partially annotated bibliography of journal articles, dissertations, convention papers, research reports, and a few books and unpublished manuscripts provides a comprehensive coverage of work on latent trait theory and practice. Documents are arranged alphabetically by author. The period covered ranges from the early 1950's to the present.…