Background: In the last few decades, researchers have turned their attention to students' understanding of scientific concepts at different school levels. The results indicate that the learners have different ideas, and most of them are inaccurate in terms of those generally accepted by the scientific community. Purpose: This study was undertaken…

Educational accountability has grown substantially over the last decade, due in large part to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Accordingly, educational researchers and policymakers are interested in the statistical properties of accountability models used for NCLB, such as status, improvement, and growth models; as well as others that are not…

Findings of Phase I (Pilot Program) of the Pennsylvania Assessment of Educational Quality program are presented in relation to the design of the phase, the rationale for measurement, the procedures for data collection and data processing, and the results of the first analysis of the data. Tests were given to 1413 fifth graders and 1285 eleventh…

In a study investigating the effects of student engagement in inquiry learning through the development of Web sites, nearly every student reported having enjoyed the project, and the majority scored an A or B for their project grade. However, neither enjoyment nor high achievement on this performance task necessarily translated into high scores on…

A manual for assessing the effectiveness of a secondary school, taking differences in the school's resources into account, is presented. The Pennsylvania State Board of Education established the Bureau of Educational Quality Assessment which developed a measurement package in Phase I. Field tests were conducted on grade 11 students in 1968 in 100…