The purpose of this article is two-fold. First, it reports on a study of the distribution of reform-oriented instructional practices among Black, White and Hispanic students, and the relationship between those practices and student achievement. The study identified many similarities in instruction across student groups, but there were some…

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 chapter provides an overview of statistical issues arising in work on educational assessment and school accountability, organized around some of the most consequential misunderstandings. The article proceeds via a series of nine vignettes describing misunderstandings of statistical uncertainty in educational assessment and school…

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores of Asian, Hispanic, Black, and White students with similar socioeconomic backgrounds and access to similar instruction in the same large midwestern school district were compared. Income levels were determined by using federal guidelines for free and reduced school lunches. The population of the study consisted…

Retention is defined as when a student is required to repeat the grade in which they were enrolled the previous year. This report provides important information on statewide student grade retention statistics, including retention data by grade level, race/ethnicity, gender, in special education status, limited English proficiency status, and…

The achievement gap is clearly visible throughout the school years, from grade-school test scores through high school graduation and higher education. It divides American Indian, Asian, Black, Latino, and White students, and it divides the economically advantaged from the disadvantaged regardless of their race/ethnicity. Under the federal No Child…

As individuals celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Advanced Placement Program[R] (AP[R]) in U.S. schools, they should honor the educators who are enabling a wider and more diverse group of U.S. students than ever before to succeed in college-level studies in high school. Yet they must also gaze clear-eyed at the inequities that remain and…

While Part I looked at the entire cohort of 8th graders and what became of them 12-years later, this section focuses on the NELS cohort that went on to postsecondary education. For that reason, we suggest caution in comparing data herein with those in Part I. The percentages will not match up perfectly between reports because the cohorts analyzed…

This research report is a review and analysis of all of the published studies during the past 25+ years (since 1974) in the area of differential validity/prediction and college admission testing. More specifically, this report includes 49 separate studies of differences in validity and/or prediction for different racial/ethnic groups and/or for…

This report summarizes evaluation results of AISD's Bilingual Education/ESL programs for 2002-2003.

Although considerable research examines the impact of grade retention on student academic achievement, various shortcomings exhibited across these studies make it difficult to derive any concrete generalizations about the effectiveness of requiring students to repeat a grade. By utilizing data based on a cohort of all low-achieving elementary…

In the eyes of much of the academic establishment, William Bowen and Derek Bok's "The Shape of the River" is the definitive defense of affirmative action. Released in 1998, this book, which was also sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, claimed that racial preferences at America's elite universities were crucial to the growth and maintenance of a…

This report is one of a series of three reports on Latino students in the educational pipeline. The purpose of this series is to provide a sense of the challenges facing Latino youth compared to White youth on the pathways to postsecondary education and the baccalaureate. In researching Part I, our interest was in finding out what happened to NELS…

As the fiftieth anniversary of the Advanced Placement Program[R] (AP[R]) in U.S. schools approaches, it is the right time to issue the first "Advanced Placement Report to the Nation." This report uses a combination of state, national, and AP Program data in new ways to provide each U.S. state with a context for celebrating its successes,…