Competency-based testing and credentialing (CBTC) initiatives aim to address inequity in adult education by fundamentally changing how states use GED®, HiSET®, and TASC™ test scores to award and withhold high school equivalency credentials. However, CBTC is inconsistent with how developers intend states to use those scores. Accordingly, it falls…

This review critiques the highly-praised and influential 2001 study, "Getting Tough? The Impact of High School Graduation Exams," which concluded that "minimum competency," or high school "graduation exams," had no effect on student achievement. The review compares the test classifications of "Getting…

This research evaluates the role of school administrative measures (including creating a greater school belonging and paying attention to student attendance) as independent variables and their resulting core competencies through the mediator of students' experience with school bullying. This study adopted a multi-level mediation model to…

Our model uses a complex quality assessment method of academic training of graduates. We have used a synthesized model, which is based on both positive and negative experience and uses qualimetric approach in quality assessment. The complex factor of the graduate's competency is a sum of scores for knowledge, skills and expertise in subjects that…

Higher education's ability to retain students through to graduation appears to be an international challenge. This is also the case in South Africa where only 27% of student complete their studies in minimum time and where 55% are unlikely to ever graduate. These challenges have meant that extended degree programmes, where degrees are formally…

This historical critique of high-stakes testing in reading focuses on selected events from three historical movements: 1) the history of standardized testing, 2) the history of standardized reading tests, and 3) the history of high-stakes testing. These three interrelated histories have produced the high-stakes, standardized reading tests used in…

We report on the relationships that exist between the critical thinking skills and the academic language proficiency of a group of first-year prospective teachers at a South African university (n = 89). The results revealed the nature of the critical thinking skills as well as the academic language proficiency of the students. Significant…

This study involves an evaluation of online learners' experiences with two Internet-based clinical social work courses. The evaluation sought to discover whether there were differences in learning between traditional (under 25 years old) and nontraditional age learners (25 years and over) who completed the asynchronous online course. The study…

The two-stage least squares approach together with quantile regression analysis is adopted here to estimate the educational production function. Such a methodology is able to capture the extreme behaviors of the two tails of students' performance and the estimation outcomes have important policy implications. Our empirical study is applied to the…

The authors investigated whether some advantages of tutoring over other instructional methods are due to microadaptation, or, tutors basing their actions on assessments of tutees they develop during tutoring. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, independent variables were shared experience (tutors either worked with the same or a different…

Increasingly frequent journalistic accounts report that schools are responding to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) by engaging in what has come to be known as "educational triage." Although these accounts rely almost entirely on anecdotal evidence, the prospect is of real concern. The NCLB accountability system divides schools into those in…

Using the nationally representative, cohort-based data of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:02), this study employs multiple regression to examine the effects of exit exams on student achievement and school completion. This study finds that exit exams as a whole do not have substantial effects on student achievement in mathematics,…

Assessments were an important tool recommended by "A Nation at Risk;" however, a generation after that report, many of the problems with student assessment still remain. This article offers brief reflections on three somewhat overlapping but enduring issues in educational assessment: validity, construct underrepresentation in outcome measures in…

It is shown that the Angoff and bookmarking cut scores are examples of true score equating that in the real world must be applied to observed scores. In the context of defining minimal competency, the percentage "failed" by such methods is a function of the length of the measuring instrument. It is argued that this length is largely…

Background/Context: The prevailing theory of action underlying No Child Left Behind's high-stakes testing and accountability ratings is that schools and students held accountable to these measures will automatically increase educational output as educators try harder, schools will adopt more effective methods, and students will learn more. In…