Most public K-12 schools in the United States enact a school improvement plan each year based upon the state testing results from the previous year. Despite the many frameworks, research, and recommendations, few scholars tackled what the plans contain and the results. Using a sequential explanatory mixed methods model, two stages examined school…

In this article we present the results of an investigation into semiotic aspects of an introductory differential equations class from two countries. In order to perform a comparative analysis, students in the USA and Tunisia were given common questions on their midterm exams that examined analytical and graphical competencies. Our results indicate…

It is the responsibility of special educators to understand and interpret the results of high-stakes assessments for educational purposes and for communication to parents. To help teachers understand and accurately communicate high-stakes testing results, the authors describe a set of research-based strategies in the "RISC" process:…

Although much research has been conducted on the psychometric properties of cognitive diagnostic models, they are only recently being used in operational settings to provide results to examinees and other stakeholders. Using this newer class of models in practice comes with a fresh challenge for diagnostic assessment developers: effectively…

When applicants take the ACT® more than once, how do colleges and universities reconcile and make sense of the multiple scores? In terms of validity, fairness, and impact on subgroup differences, are certain score-use polices better than others? The focus of this issue brief is to summarize evidence on the validity and fairness of various…

This May sees the release of the results from the third PISA assessment of financial literacy. These results are largely consistent with previous findings, but also go beyond earlier assessments in probing students' behaviours and attitudes towards money matters (including digital money matters) and their exposure to financial education at school.…

In this study, we re-analyze recent empirical research on replication from a meta-analytic perspective. We argue that there are different ways to define "replication failure," and that analyses can focus on exploring variation among replication studies or assess whether their results contradict the findings of the original study. We…

Can a class assignment covering the reading help students do better in an introductory chemistry class for nonmajors? Two sections of the same course have been compared where one section had a reading assignment that "forced" the students to interact with the text while the other class had the typical homework, quiz assignments, and…

This study explores whether and to what extent the background information supplied by 10,155 immigrants who took an official language test in Norwegian affected their chances of passing one, two, or all three parts of the test. The background information included in the analysis was prior education, region (location of their home country),…

An active-learning concurrent preparatory general chemistry course was adopted to replace a prerequisite course that lacked effectiveness in improving student outcomes. Our previous study showed that the concurrent course increased final exam performance and retention in a cohort of students. This paper studies the course modality impact of the…

The purpose of the present study is to evaluate proficiency tests of the universities in Turkey in line with the ALTE Quality Assurance Checklists in terms of four dimensions: a. Test construction, b. Administration & Logistics c. Grading, Marking Results and d. Test Analysis & Post-examination Review. The study took place in four…

Physics education research (PER) has long used concept inventories to investigate student learning over time and to compare performance across various student subpopulations. PER has traditionally used normalized gain to explore these questions but has begun to use established methods from other fields, including Cohen's "d," multiple…

Web based resources are playing an important place in the academic life of the students in our country. The students use the website for getting the primary information with regard to any educational institution. University websites are the gateways for the students. The students are empowered to get the information virtually without visiting the…

This study focused on adults who were previously remedial students while enrolled in a higher education institution. The goal was to understand the perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of adults who were previously in remedial higher education courses. Students who have been deemed as not college-ready fell into a few categories such low…

Focusing on the variables that can affect both academic achievement and the well-being of students has been crucial for their development, making schools effective and designing educational policy as well as curriculum. The study has aimed to investigate the effect of peer bullying on academic achievement and to determine moderators in the…