The development of spatial navigation in children depends not only on remembering which landmarks lead to a goal location but also on developing strategies to deal with changes in the environment or imperfections in memory. Using cue combination methods, the authors examined 3- and 4-year-old children's memory for different types of spatial cues…

Assessment of human abilities and behaviors is enormously enhanced by the use of standardized assessment measures that yield norm-referenced scores. As school psychologists, they rely on quantitative findings to anchor their judgments about a child's developmental and educational functioning and to enhance our capacity to draw diagnostic…

This response to the comments contains three main sections, each addressing a subset of the comments. In the first section, I will respond to the comments by Brennan, Haertel, and Moss. All of these comments suggest ways in which my presentation could be extended or improved; I generally agree with their suggestions, so my response to their…

The new national educational policy was implemented at secondary schools in 2002 in Japan. The revised Course of Study for foreign language education corresponding to the national educational policy decreased the number of English lessons per week from four to three at the junior high school level, which resulted in a 25% decrease in English…

Background: There is worldwide interest in improving the effectiveness of teachers and teaching. This paper considers two strands of that interest. It revisits the impact of using enhanced feedback from teachers to pupils as a way of improving attainment, and it looks at the feasibility of teachers using research evidence to create their own…

Students on a first year undergraduate economics module were given the choice of when to sit their first assessment in the subject in order to determine both preferences over assessment timing, and the impact of timing on performance. Clear preferences of having this option were shown (only 2% of students stated to be indifferent) with those more…

As a result of the growing use of state and national testing of literacy and numeracy among school students, there are increasing demands for teachers to interpret assessment data. In light of this, there is a need to provide benchmarks or a framework that identifies critical aspects of teachers' understanding that are needed to interpret data…

The current paper examined the relationship between perceived characteristics of the learning environment in an e-module in relation to test performance among a group of e-learners. Using structural equation modelling, the relationship between these variables is further explored in terms of the proposed double mediation as outlined by Ning and…

Educators and parents alike often wonder what secondary students remember from a class after the semester is over. This study examined that question by looking at test data for participants who retook their semester final 77 days after they originally took it. Students were retested in World Geography, Algebra II and Physical Science. The findings…

While federal law requires students to be tested in math, English-language arts and science in particular grades, states are still struggling to mount the resources and expertise necessary to fully implement college and career readiness standards, let alone new assessments aligned to these higher standards. New assessments are not only more…

In the current climate of high-stakes testing and performance-based accountability measures, there is a pressing need to reconsider the nature of teaching and what capacities one must develop to be a good teacher. Educational policy experts around the world have pointed out that policies focused disproportionately on student test outcomes can…

This study focuses on metalinguistic awareness (MLA) and its relation to academic achievement for mono-, bi- and multilingual adolescents in Denmark. While MLA is one of several cognitive measures positively related to bilingualism and bilingualism is associated with academic advantages, Danish bi-/multilingual pupils appear not to benefit from…

Learning to read proficiently by the end of third grade is one of the best predictors of a student's later academic success. This policy brief analyzes school-level District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System (DC CAS) exam results, which are reported on a four-tiered scale: Below Basic, Basic, Proficient and Advanced. Results found that:…

As school psychologists know, and as a recent survey confirms, school psychologists devote considerably more time to conducting mandated assessments for special education than to any other professional activity (Curtis, Castillo, & Gelley, 2012). A major part of this activity involves documenting assessment findings in the form of a written…

Each year in the fall and spring semesters, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes are administered to a sample of pre-K students in AISD. The following report provides Fall 2013 results for each vertical team of schools.