While the CPA exam is uniform for all jurisdictions, individual jurisdictions are allowed to set the requirements to sit for the exam. These requirements vary by jurisdiction, with some being more restrictive than others. We analyze the decision process of international candidates to proxy for candidates that can choose jurisdictions with less…

The OECD and its U.S. administrator, McGraw-Hill Education CTB, have recently concluded the first cycle of the OECD-Test for Schools in the U.S. This test is being marketed to local schools and is designed to compare 15-year-olds from individual participating schools against peers nationally and internationally using the OECD's PISA test as its…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) initiated this special study in an effort to link the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scale to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) scale so that states could compare the performance of their students with that of students in other countries. The…

Despite a pending policy change aimed at including more students with disabilities and English-language learners (ELLs) in the "nation's report card," the federal agency that administers the national testing program appears to be softening the penalty for states that fail to improve inclusion rates. The disagreement underscores the…

The 2011 NAEP-TIMSS linking study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) was designed to predict Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) scores for the U.S. states that participated in 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics and science assessment of eighth-grade students.…

Recent months have brought an ever-louder drumbeat in support of state-level participation in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), with a weaker chorus calling for states to participate in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Despite the growing infatuation with international comparisons of…

Although there is significant research on improving college-level teaching practices, most literature in the field assumes an incentive for improvement. The research presented in this paper addresses the issue of poor incentives for improving university-level teaching. Specifically, it proposes instructor-designed common examinations as an…

This study examined the feasibility of administering GED Tests using a computer based testing system with embedded accessibility tools and the impact on test scores and test-taker experience when GED Tests are transitioned from paper to computer. Nineteen test centers across five states successfully installed the computer based testing program,…

Many articles and reports have reviewed, researched, and commented on international assessments from the perspective of exploring what is relevant for the United States' education systems. Researchers make claims about whether the top-performing systems have transferable practices or policies that could be applied to the United States. However,…

Although testing accommodations are commonly provided to students with disabilities within large-scale testing programs, research findings on how well accommodations allow for comparable measurement of student knowledge and skill remain inconclusive. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which 1 commonly held belief about testing…

Problems of scale typically arise when comparing test score trends, gaps, and gap trends across different tests. To overcome some of these difficulties, we can express the difference between the observed test performance of two groups with graphs or statistics that are metric-free (i.e., invariant under positive monotonic transformations of the…