In recent years, schools and large-scale assessment developers across the United States have been providing English learners with language supports when they take tests to reduce construct-irrelevant variance, or errors in test scores due to factors that are extraneous to the construct being assessed (Thorndike et al., 1991). Some of these…

Across six Sub-Saharan African countries, grade 4 students of teachers who were hired after a free primary education reform perform worse, on average, on language and math tests--statistically significantly so in language--than students of teachers who were hired before the reform. Teachers who were hired just after the reform also perform worse,…

In this study we evaluated the stability of item parameters and student scores, using the pre-equated (pre-pandemic) parameters from Spring 2019 and post-equated (post-pandemic) parameters from Spring 2021 in two calibration and equating designs related to item parameter treatment: re-estimating all anchor parameters (Design 1) and holding the…

The United States continues to be a top destination for international students pursuing an advanced degree. Some information about the characteristics of international students applying to graduate programs in the United States is available, but little is known about how these characteristics are related to test taker performance on graduate…

Beginning with the 2020/21 school year, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) began collecting literacy screening assessment data from schools and districts participating in certain state grants. Screening assessment benchmark scores were available for just over 35,000 unique students across 2020/21 and 2021/22,…

The Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) has synthesized key data on English learners (ELs) into two-page sheets on a variety of subjects. This fact sheet provides the following data on ELs in the United States over the 2017-2018 school year: (1) Percentage of Students Enrolled in K-12 Who Are English Learners; (2) English Language…

These are the appendixes for the report, "English Proficiency and the Pandemic: How Texas English Learner Students Fared during the COVID-19 Pandemic. REL 2023-144." This study examined levels of English proficiency before and during the COVID-19 pandemic among English learner students in grades 3-12 in Texas. In 2020-2021, nearly…

This is the 2020-2021 annual report on the academic progress of English language learners in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. This report addresses the following three areas: (1) Demographic characteristics of students classified as English Language Learners (ELL); (2) English language acquisition results of ELL students on the State's English…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of Uncommon Schools in a turnaround setting. Uncommon was awarded a 2016 grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) to support TurnNJ, a project intended to support Uncommon's whole-school turnaround efforts in Camden and Newark, New Jersey. The study…

This study examines the effects of English Learner (EL) status on subsequent Special Education (SPED) placement. Through a research-practice partnership, we link student demographic data and initial English proficiency assessment data across seven cohorts of test takers and observe EL and SPED programmatic participation for these students over…

Purpose: This study investigated within-language and between-language associations between phonological memory, vocabulary, and grammar in French-English (n = 43) and Spanish-English (n = 25) bilingual children at 30, 36, and 48 months. It was predicted that phonological memory would display both within-language and between-language relations to…

Since its introduction in 2017, NFER has been contracted by Ofqual to develop, deliver and analyse the results of the National Reference Test (NRT) in English and maths. The NRT is administered annually and shows if student performance in English and maths at GCSE level has changed from year to year. The NRT results are based on analysis of data…

In Winter 2021-2022, the Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System (NSCAS) assessments are administered in ELA and mathematics in Grades 3-8. In Spring 2021-2022, the NSCAS assessments are administered in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics in Grades 3-8 and in science in Grades 5 and 8. The purposes of the NSCAS assessments are to…

In Fall and Winter 2022-2023, the NSCAS assessments were administered in ELA and mathematics for grades 3-8. In Spring 2022-2023, the NSCAS assessments were administered in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics for grades 3-8 and in science for grades 5 and 8. The purposes of the NSCAS assessments are to measure and report Nebraska students'…

Each year the National Reference Test (NRT) reports the proportions of students achieving at or above three key GCSE grades in English and mathematics. The NRT is therefore uniquely placed as a Key Stage 4 assessment which compares performance directly at ability level, to contribute to the evidence on the impact of disruption to education due to…