Inquiry-Based Teaching Practice (IBTP) is an essential component of science education, and promoting its implementation is at the heart of various reform efforts. Even though science teachers regard IBTP as an essential pedagogical method, they rarely use it for various reasons. This study utilizes Bronfenbrenner's ecological framework to examine…

This paper addresses methodological issues arising from an experimental study of North Carolina's Early College High School Initiative, a four-year longitudinal experimental study funded by Institute for Education Sciences. North Carolina implemented the Early College High School (ECHS) Initiative in response to low high school graduation rates.…

This quasi-experimental study measured the effectiveness of a locally created summer Algebra readiness program in a large suburban high school district in New Jersey. Incoming ninth grade students who were not ready for high school algebra were invited to participate in the summer program. The program was designed to provide access to more…

In accordance with the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law of 2001, 100% of students were expected to become proficient on state assessments of reading and mathematics by the end of 2013-2014 academic year. Schools that consistently failed to meet the NCLB's Adequate Yearly Progress requirements were subject to penalties. In 2011, the U.S.…

The guiding principles and procedures for pupil assessment in Portuguese compulsory education were established by the Implementing Order No. 1/2005, 5th January, with amendments introduced by the Implementing Orders No. 18/2006, 14th March and No. 5/2007, 10th January, and apply to the learning objectives and competencies defined for the various…

This year the Center on Education Policy analyzed data on the achievement of different groups of students in two distinct ways. First, it looked at grade 4 test results to determine whether the performance of various groups improved at three achievement levels--basic and above, proficient and above, and advanced. Second, it looked at gaps between…

This year the Center on Education Policy analyzed data on the achievement of different groups of students in two distinct ways. First, it looked at grade 4 test results to determine whether the performance of various groups improved at three achievement levels--basic and above, proficient and above, and advanced. Second, it looked at gaps between…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between gifted adolescents' forms of overexcitabilities and self-concepts. Clusters of adolescents were formed on the basis of their overexcitabilities, and these clusters of adolescents were then compared with regard to their self-concept scores. Gender differences were also examined. The…

The Swedish school system comprises: (1) Pre-primary school (Forskola), typical age 1-5; (2) Preschool class in the compulsory school (Grundskola) typical age 6 (participation voluntary); (3) Compulsory school, typical age 7-16, grades 1-9, and (4) Upper secondary school, 17 programmes (4 mainly academic, 13 vocational), typical age 16-19, grades…

This study was conducted to obtain information about a mentoring program through the eyes of eleventh and twelfth grade student mentors. These students were able to tell what needed to be known about the strengths and weaknesses of this mentoring program and what they felt needed to be done to make the program more effective and meaningful. This…

Inclusion of students with disabilities in district-wide and state assessments is mandated by federal regulations, and teachers sometimes play an important role in rating these students' work. In this study, trained teachers rated student proficiency in performance assessments in language arts and mathematics in third, fifth, and ninth grades. The…

In this study, I developed three methods for the assessment of high-school students' environmental decision-making skills. The three methods were developed based on perspectives of decision-making expertise in psychology and are named "Satisfying Results," "Coherence," and "Process Decomposition." Satisfying Results looked directly at the choices…

Although transitioning from school to school can be challenging at any level, the transition to high school may be particularly fraught with challenge because students are experiencing a change in schools as well as the physical, emotional, and psychological changes inherent to adolescence. Educators and researchers agree that ninth grade is a…

In practice, vertical scales have been continually used to measure students' achievement progress across several grade levels and have been considered very challenging psychometric procedures. Recently, such practices have been drawing many criticisms. The major criticisms focus on dimensionality and construct equivalence of the latent trait or…

This study investigates how peer assessment can help students to learn about photosynthesis in a "high attaining," year nine class in a UK 11-18 comprehensive school. There is limited research on how peer assessment can influence the learning of "high attaining students"; most existing research focuses on how formative…