Gender differences in math-related professional achievements have been identified as a worldwide problem. Academic achievement assessments, however, have repeatedly revealed gender similarities. The observed gender similarity might be due to biased assessments that heavily rely on reading skills, which favors girls. The current study analyzed 29…

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the…

The relationship between reading and empathy was explored. Controlling for GPA and gender, reading variables were hypothesized as related to empathy; the relationship was expected to differ for males and females. For the complete sample, affective components were related to GPA but not reading. Perspective taking was related to reading…

The purpose of the study was to measure students' reported test-taking effort and the relationship between reported effort and performance on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) Advanced mathematics test. This was done in three countries participating in TIMSS Advanced 2008 (Sweden, Norway, and Slovenia), and the…

This paper describes a secondary analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading scores by gender. Data were national public 4th- and 8th-grade reading scores from composite and subscales for 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2013. Twelfth-grade scores for composite and literary experience from 2005, 2009, and 2013 and gain…

This 2015 Brown Center Report (BCR) represents the fourteenth edition of the series since the first issue was published in 2000. It includes three studies. Like all previous BCRs, the studies explore independent topics but share two characteristics: they are empirical and based on the best evidence available. The studies in this edition are on the…

This study looked at the effect of both quantity and quality of computer use on achievement. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 student survey comprising of 4,356 students (boys, n = 2,129; girls, n = 2,227) was used to predict academic achievement from quantity and quality of computer use while controlling for…

This chapter focuses on the instruction of diverse students in mainstream classrooms. The first part summarizes academic achievement of diverse students from different ethnicity, gender, language and social class. The second part discusses the characteristics of different diverse instruction. The third part suggests specific instructional…

In recent decades, a dramatic shift has occurred in higher education throughout much of the industrialized world. For the first time in history, women are completing more education than men. Through the 1970s, women lagged behind men in the number of tertiary degrees completed in most nations. Since the 1980s, women have begun to reach parity with…

This paper examines changes in demographic and socioeconomic inequalities in student achievement over the school career, and the extent that these inequalities are accounted for by other influences such as, region and socioeconomic background (where appropriate), school differences and prior achievement. The data analysed are from a longitudinal…

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment that measures the performance of 15-year-olds in reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy. Coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of 34 member countries, PISA was…

"The Condition of Education 2017" is a congressionally mandated annual report summarizing the latest data on education in the United States. This report is designed to help policymakers and the public monitor educational progress. This year's report includes 50 indicators on topics ranging from prekindergarten through postsecondary…

This study conducts a meta-analysis using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to address the questions of the extent of gender differences in reading, whether or not these differences apply similarly across English and non-English speaking countries and decrease with age. Female secondary students performed 0.19 standard deviation units above their…

Results of a previous meta-analysis of gender differences in reading achievement at the secondary school level (Lietz, in press) showed significant differences between major assessment programs. Thus, the gender gap in favour of girls was more pronounced for the assessment programs conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Programs in…