Improving student success outcomes such as persistence and graduation rates remains a priority for higher education institutions, scholars, and advocates. Recent scholarly work argues for more qualitative work in this area to develop a deeper understanding of the issue and to identify more effective ways to increase college completion rates across…

Variation in test performance among examinees from different regions or national jurisdictions is often partially attributed to differences in the degree of content correspondence between local school or training program curricula, and the test of interest. This posited relationship between test-curriculum correspondence, or "alignment,"…

This study examined the historical performance of students at Michigan State University in 12 life sciences courses over 13 yr to find variables impacting student success. Hierarchical linear modeling predicted 25.0-62.8% of the variance in students' grades in the courses analyzed. The primary predictor of a student's course grade was his or her…

This study applied self-determination theory to investigate the effects of students' autonomous motivation and their perceptions of teacher autonomy support on need satisfaction adjustment, learning achievement, and cardiorespiratory fitness over a 4-month personal conditioning unit. Participants were 253 urban adolescents (121 girls and 132 boys,…

It has been suggested that in order to truly understand student achievement, data must be collected with an assessment tool that includes a measure of performance, is psychometrically sound, and is consistent with cognitive psychology. Curriculum-based assessment for instructional design (CBA-ID) is presented as an assessment model that addresses…