Like most other states, Missouri uses assessments intended to measure whether students are on a pathway to "college and career readiness." The state longitudinal data system now has the capacity to directly test that claim. We make use of 8th-grade assessment (MAP) scores in Math, Science, and Communication Arts for roughly 260,000…

School systems across the nation have used some form of instructional feedback, such as traditional and standards-based grading systems, to document students' academic performance. The urgency of developing an alternative grading system emerged because grades determined by teachers using the traditional grading system were unreliable. This study…

We investigated two research questions: which students are more likely to respond inconsistently to mixed-worded questionnaire scales, and which country samples have larger shares of inconsistent respondents? We defined an inconsistent response as strongly agreeing or disagreeing with both positively and negatively worded items of the same scale.…

In response to COVID-19, U.S. students learned remotely from mid-March to June 2020. At the start of academic year 2020--21, many schools remained remote but others--primarily Catholic and other private schools--reopened. We consider Catholic schooling as a proxy for in-person instruction and use national data from Renaissance Star and MAP Growth…

In this quasi-experimental design (QED) study, we examined the impacts of Catapult Learning's Wraparound Supplemental Educational Services program on Grades 6-8 student math and reading achievement in selected schools in a large parochial school district. The primary focus of this report was Wraparound Supplemental Educational Services' impact on…

This study capitalizes on response and process data from the computer-based TIMSS 2019 Problem Solving and Inquiry tasks to investigate gender differences in test-taking behaviors and their association with mathematics achievement at the eighth grade. Specifically, a recently proposed hierarchical speed-accuracy-revisits (SAR) model was adapted to…

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share more detailed results and to describe more fully the sample and methods used in the research included in the brief, "Student achievement in 2021-22: Cause for hope and continued urgency." The authors investigated two main research questions in this brief: (1) How do achievement gains…

Previous literature has indicated a lack of information available regarding virtual schooling and how it compares to traditional schooling in terms of the academic achievement of students (Angiello, 2010; Brady, 2012; Dichev, Dicheva, Agre, & Angelova, 2013; Molnar et al., 2019; Molnar, 2021). This study aimed to examine differences among…

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…

This paper targets patterns of expressed emotional directions towards mathematics. By using TIMSS data and recoding two of the instruments, we compared responses from the same student cohort in Grade 4 (11 years old) and Grade 8 (15 years old) in Sweden. Two hypotheses were tested: negative emotions including negative motivations increase with…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not adopting a blended learning model led to significant difference in the Algebra I standardized test scores on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) End-of-Course (EOC) exam between secondary students who experienced a blended learning model in their classrooms and…

This study identifies students' academic trajectories in the middle grades relative to a set of college readiness benchmarks. We apply math and reading college readiness benchmarks to rich longitudinal data for more than 360,000 students across the nation. Student-level and school-level demographic characteristics significantly predict academic…

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the 9th grade state assessment test scores for Disadvantaged Hispanic students who are taking the English I State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness End-of-Course exam. The group analyzed was comprised of the 2016-2017 cohort students from a South Texas High School. [The…

Globally girls' performance in mathematics has improved over the years as measured by TIMSS results. Inconsistency in mathematics performance of boys and girls is still an area of great concern. This study examines the relationship between mathematics achievement and gender of South African Grade 9 learners from TIMSS 2015 data. The data were…

Important educational policy decisions, like whether to shorten or extend the school year, often require accurate estimates of how much students learn during the year. Yet, related research relies on a mostly untested assumption: that growth in achievement is linear throughout the entire school year. We examine this assumption using a dataset…