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…

This report outlines findings that relate to writing, taken from the third annual literacy survey, which was conducted in November/December 2012. 34,910 young people aged 8 to 16 participated. Key findings include: (1) 44.1% of children and young people enjoy writing either "very much" or "quite a lot"; 14.8% of children and…

This report outlines findings about children's and young people's reading from our fourth annual literacy survey conducted in November/December 2013. 29,422 young people aged eight to 16 participated. Some of the key findings for 2013 include: (1) Levels of reading enjoyment have improved for the first time since 2005 (see Figure 2, p. 9); (2)…

This report reveals that children and young people are reading less and more are embarrassed to be seen reading, while many also believe that their parents don't care if they spend time reading. However, not only are children and young people reading less and developing more negative attitudes towards reading, but there is also a clear correlation…

This report presents second year information about the degree to which children and young people in Middlesbrough enjoy reading and writing, how often then engage in reading and writing, what types of materials they read and write and how they feel about reading and writing. It also outlines information about their confidence in their own…

The purpose of the study was to determine what factors affect success in passing the General Education Development (GED) exam. Using data gathered between 1960 and 1972 from 200 successful GED students at the Mattoon Area Adult Education Center, Ill., the authors developed frequency distribution charts to characterize the students and scattergrams…

The effects of skewed theta distributions on indices of differential item functioning (DIF) were studied, comparing Mantel Haenszel (N. Mantel and W. Haenszel, 1959) and DFIT (N. S. Raju, W. J. van der Linden, and P. F. Fleer) (noncompensatory DIF). The significance of the study is that in educational and psychological data, the distributions one…

This paper discusses the limitations of Classical Test Theory, the purpose of Item Response Theory/Latent Trait Measurement models, and the step-by-step calculations in the Rasch measurement model. The paper explains how Item Response Theory (IRT) transforms person abilities and item difficulties into the same metric for test-independent and…

The Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS), funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is examining the characteristics of children receiving preschool special education, the services they receive, their transitions across educational levels, and their performance over time on assessments of academic and adaptive skills. PEELS…

The purposes of this study were to introduce the iterative purification procedure and to compare this with the two-step purification procedure, to compare false positive error rates and the power of five observed score approaches and to identify factors affecting power and false positive rates in each method. This study used 2,400 data sets that…

The accuracy of the Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure, Gibbs sampling, was considered for estimation of item and ability parameters of the one-parameter logistic model. Four data sets were analyzed to evaluate the Gibbs sampling procedure. Data sets were also analyzed using methods of conditional maximum likelihood, marginal maximum likelihood,…

The study of enrollment trends for each of Hudson County Community College's programs and for its academic status classifications will be used in the college's program reviews and should also prove useful in its strategic planning. The significant growth in combined Liberal Arts AA English/ Humanities and Business/Social Sciences program majors…

This study sought to determine whether the dimensions underlying a comprehensive set of 15 work-relevant abilities were similar to the Data/Ideas and Things/People Work Task Dimensions (D. J. Prediger, 1996) underlying J. L. Holland's (1997) hexagonal model of interest and occupational types. The work task dimensions and a general ability…

This executive summary reports on the number of students not reading on grade level in all second and third grades throughout Louisiana. The report notes the provisions of the legislation that requires such data be generated, and discusses selection of the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) as the uniform assessment instrument to be…

This report contains tabular summaries based on data collected from the Survey of High School Curricular Options. The national survey was conducted in response to the growing controversy over the implications that curriculum differentiation, or tracking, has for American school children. The tables present statistics on the policies and practices…