Background: The past half-century has resulted in a substantial expansion of early childhood center-based care in the United States. Today, over 74% of American children aged 3-5 attend center-based care (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2021). Although public pre-k is considered socially favorable,…

The COVID-19 pandemic led states and districts to take a break from grading students and pause standardized testing. As part of an ongoing series of articles on how schools might reconceptualize their work, William Penuel considers what kinds of assessment practices should be carried forward, as schools attempt to become more equitable. He…

In recent years, students' performance in Biology in the Senior Secondary Certificates Examination (SSCE) has not been encouraging. Studies have attributed fluctuating achievement of students in Biology to ineffective use of instructional strategies. If sustainable solution is not proffered to the issue of poor performance in Biology, it could…

The achievement gap, or opportunity gap, in education is when one group of students outperforms another group of students in statistical category. For decades, these gaps been analyzed in an attempt to support students and close these differences in categorical scores. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to focus on closing the…

The nonequivalent-groups anchor-test (NEAT) data-collection design is commonly used in large-scale assessments. Under this design, different test groups take different test forms. Each test form has its own unique items and all test forms share a set of common items. If item response theory (IRT) models are applied to analyze the test data, the…

The learning environment in K-12 education has been a topic in education for many years, especially in the United States. The problem that was addressed in this mixed methods study is that students' standardized test scores may be affected by the learning environment--whether a traditional classroom or a virtual setting. The purpose of this…

Student achievement has become critical in measuring school achievement. The problem was underachievement in a K-12 public charter school in northwest Ohio. The purpose of this study was to determine whether standards-based assessments (SBAs) improved standardized test achievement in a K-12 public charter school in northwest Ohio. The theories of…

Background/Context: Opting out of high-stakes standardized tests, a phenomenon so widespread in the United States as to be regarded as a movement, is nevertheless a misunderstood and often maligned force in educational politics. Purpose: This article offers a counter-narrative of opt-out activism--a more thorough and vivid account of what we view…

The current study examined the convergent validity between the standardized PEAK Comprehensive Assessment (PCA) and the semi-standardized PEAK Pre-assessment (PEAK-PA). Twenty-two participants were administered each tool, and an item by item analysis was conducted to evaluate correlations between tests. The results suggested a strong positive…

The global popularity of test-based accountability appears to signal political trust in standardised assessments as valid and relevant measures of education quality. Nonetheless, research shows that educators' perceptions of standardised testing and test-based accountability can vary significantly, as do their responses to accountability demands.…

This study examines the perceptions of teachers and school leaders from high performing, socially disadvantaged government schools about the value of Australia's national standardised test regime for informing learning and teaching. While many studies report negative experiences and perceptions of standardised testing, few studies have explicitly…

The overarching goal of this quantitative study was to determine if there were significant differences in the Louisiana Education Assessment Program (LEAP 2025) achievement scores of Algebra I students before and after attending summer remediation. The sample size consisted of 581 freshman students from the 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, and…

Implemented was a 45-minute per day Primary Science IDEAS intervention in grades 1-2 integrating reading and writing within science instruction in a multi-year study conducted in 8 experimental and 9 control schools. Results found a significant direct achievement effect in grades 1-2 on both the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) Science and…

Researchers largely rely on child language and literacy measures to determine the effectiveness of interventions for Latino dual language learners. However, some of these measures may miss certain strengths of these students. This study identified two unstandardized language and literacy tasks (IDELA food and animal vocabulary and personal…

The purpose of the quantitative ex-post facto study was to determine to what extent a predictive relationship exists between students' reading comprehension skills and mastery of conceptualizing mathematical problems for students in the fifth through eighth grades in a metropolitan area in the northeastern United States. The Federal School…