Colleges have increasingly turned to predictive analytics to target at-risk students for additional support. Most of the predictive analytic applications in higher education are proprietary, with private companies offering little transparency about their underlying models. We address this lack of transparency by systematically comparing two…

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is an international assessment of student performance in reading literacy at the fourth grade. PIRLS measures students in the fourth year of formal schooling because this is typically when students' learning transitions from a focus on "learning to read" to a focus on…

This report examines the differences in impact estimates and standard errors that arise when these are derived using state achievement tests only (as pre-tests and post-tests), study-administered tests only, or some combination of state- and study-administered tests. State tests may yield different evaluation results relative to a test that is…

This manual provides guidance and documentation for users of the longitudinal kindergarten-fourth grade (K-4) public-use data file of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011), which includes the first release of the public version of the third-grade data. This manual mainly provides information specific…

In this set of four supplemental tables, the authors compare the baseline test scores of the treatment and matched control group samples observed in each year after KIPP entry (outcome years 1 to 4). As discussed in Chapter III, the authors used an iterative propensity score estimation procedure to calculate each student's probability of entering…

This technical report and user's guide is designed to provide researchers with an overview of the design and implementation of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), as well as with information on how to access the PISA 2009 data. This information is meant to supplement that presented in Organization for Economic Cooperation…

This report presents student-level achievement results for two groups of schools in Tennessee: (a) four charter schools that began operation in 2003-2004; and (b) three new charter schools that were established in 2004-2005. These two cohorts were therefore completing their second and first academic years, respectively, at the time the achievement…

Not infrequently, investigators assume that reliability for groups is greater than reliability for persons, or that the error variance for groups is less than that for persons. Using generalizability theory, it is shown that this "conventional wisdom" is not necessarily true. Examples are provided from the course-evaluation and the…

When norming tests, it may be preferable to use the matrix sampling technique. The results from the samples may be used to estimate what the distribution of scores would have been if each subject had taken all the items. This paper compares four methods for making these estimates. The sample size made it possible to compare the techniques in a…

The use of the Work Keys Listening and Writing Assessment, part of an assessment system of the generic employability skills of individuals, needs to be accompanied by systematic evaluation of its technical qualities. This study examined sampling variability and generalizability of Listening and Writing scores when multiple forms, raters, and…

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), a battery of 10 vocational tests, was administered to a national probability sample of nearly 12,000 young people, 15 to 23 years of age. Score distributions from the study were needed by the Armed Services to set performance levels for accepting and assigning recruits. Three psychometric…

The first of three self-contained studies in this report characterizes those who chose to take the California High School Proficiency Examination and those who passed. Characteristics of examinees' families, schools, and communities were also identified. In the second report, a school financial simulation model calculated district revenues which…