By applying multilevel models with random effects, the authors reviewed and synthesized findings from 30 studies that were published in the last 20 years exploring the relationship between the Educational Testing Service Major Field Test for a Bachelor's Degree in Business (MFTB) and related factors. The results suggest that MFTB scores correlated…

Morgan, Hodge, Trepinski, and Anderson (2014) have written an article that continues to confirm what we have known for some time-teacher effects on student achievement have limited stability. In this commentary, we address the other potential contributions this work can make to inform practice, policy, and research. While illustrating Morgan et…

The traditional JAVA course examination is just a list of questions from which we cannot know students' skills of programming. According to the eight abilities in curriculum objectives, we designed an assessment standard of JAVA programming course that is based on employment orientation and apply it to practical teaching to check the teaching…

Public school critics often point to rising expenditures and relatively flat test scores to justify their school reform agendas. The claims are flawed because their analyses fail to account for the difference in data types between dollars (ratio) and test scores (interval). A cost-benefit analysis using dollars as a common metric for both costs…

Ohio is raising its expectations for what their students must learn and their schools must accomplish. Ohio's School Report Cards are one good way to determine if they are meeting their goals. There are many changes on this year's report card, changes that reflect the increased expectations Ohio has for its students and schools. So this year's…

Planning for policy implementation is as important as the implementation itself. A policy's intent can be subverted by the way the policy is implemented, or when unanticipated outcomes take precedence over the true intent. This article presents three cases of specific instances of unintended outcomes from policy implementation and presents a…

A common practice in medical education is to create a prescribed distribution of grades, or ratings, so that only a certain percentage of students receive the highest marks. This approach typically is employed to curb grade inflation and as a means to help faculty distinguish outstanding performers. Despite the well-intentioned reasoning for using…

Standardized examinations, such as those developed and disseminated by the ACS Examinations Institute, are artifacts of the teaching of a course and over time may provide a historical perspective on how curricula have changed and evolved. This study investigated changes in organic chemistry curricula across a 60-year period by evaluating 18 ACS…

The study investigates the characteristics of prospective teachers' geometric discourses at the van Hiele model of thinking (1959/1985), using Sfard's (2008) discursive framework. In this report, I align two prospective teachers' pre- and post-van Hiele geometry test (Usiskin, 1982) results with the analyses of their geometric discourses from…

Schooling can produce both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, both of which are important determinants of adult outcomes. Using very rich data from a UK birth cohort study, I estimate teacher value added (VA) models for both pupils' test scores and non-cognitive skills. I show that teachers are equally important in the determination of pupils'…

This study investigated how students in an urban 2-year college used self-regulation strategies in a General Chemistry I course and whether their use was correlated with both performance and the ability to correctly predict performance on a course exam. The 142 students enrolled in all 10 sections of the course were asked to complete the Motivated…

Teacher's conceptions are important as they could have a strong influence on their professional practices. This study set out to explore Fijian teacher's conceptions of assessment. Seventy teachers enrolled in an assessment course at a university in Fiji were involved in this study. Data was collected by asking teachers to write a reflection on…

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was designed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to evaluate the quality, equity, and efficiency of school systems around the world. Specifically, the PISA has assessed 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy on a 3-year cycle, since…

Recently, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) released a document that established initial performance levels and the associated threshold scale scores for the Smarter Balanced assessment. The report included estimated percentages of students expected to perform at each of the four performance levels, reported by grade…

Grade point average (GPA) has been around for more than two centuries. However, it has created a lot of confusion, frustration, and anxiety to GPA-producers and users alike, especially when used across-nation for different purposes. This paper looks into the reasons for such a state of affairs from the perspective of educational measurement. It…