This brief presents a method for predicting the impact of school closures on average ACT® test scores. The purpose is to illustrate a methodology and major conditions that should be considered in predicting aggregate ACT scores when school closes prematurely and learning and testing are disrupted. Across three scenarios examined herein, the impact…

Studying physics for nonphysics majors at college level is usually a process of learning new problem-solving skills and sometimes seems a frustrating experience. In an attempt to provide students with more learning resources, online homework was required to supplement the instruction. This study reveals the role of the online homework assignments…

The purpose of this document is to describe the methods RAND used to analyze achievement for 23 personalized learning (PL) schools for the 2012-13 through 2013-14 academic years. This work was performed at the request of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), as part of a multi-year evaluation contract. The 23 schools were selected from a…

This executive summary presents results from a study that began in 2013-2014, and involves a longitudinal design to follow a sample of 1,169 children (139 Spanish-speaking DLLs) who attended 199 randomly-selected Georgia's Pre-K classrooms. These findings focus on results from the second year of the study, which included 1,034 of these children…

This the executive summary of the 2013-2014 study which provided the baseline year for the longitudinal study. The study included observations of teaching practices in a random sample of 199 Georgia's Pre-K classrooms and assessments of the language, literacy, math, general knowledge, and behavior skills of a sample of 1,169 children attending…

In a provocative and influential paper, Jesse Rothstein (2010) finds that standard value added models (VAMs) suggest implausible future teacher effects on past student achievement, a finding that obviously cannot be viewed as causal. This is the basis of a falsification test (the Rothstein falsification test) that appears to indicate bias in VAM…

Canadians often assume that what is said about education south of the U.S. border applies north of it as well. However Canada's international rankings are consistently higher than those of the U.S., primarily because of different social conditions (less inequality, less child poverty, etc.) and different educational policies (more equitable…

This "Practitioner's Guide to Growth Models," commissioned by the Technical Issues in Large-Scale Assessment (TILSA) and Accountability Systems & Reporting (ASR), collaboratives of the "Council of Chief State School Officers," describes different ways to calculate student academic growth and to make judgments about the…

When studying different types of returns to education, educational reforms are commonly used in the economics literature as a source of exogenous variation in education. The Swedish compulsory school reform is one example; the reform extended compulsory education throughout the country, in different municipalities at different points in time. Such…

This is the 2nd "New Jersey City Kids Count," a snapshot of child well-being in New Jersey's largest and poorest cities. The report serves to measure progress and challenges in the cities where most of New Jersey's poorest children are growing up. The Association for Children of New Jersey, with funding from the Annie E. Casey…

This article discusses the relationship among an individual's cognitive style, attitude to learning, and his or her achievement in the context of computer aided learning (CAL). The results of a small-scale study involving 32 students (18 male and 14 female) studying their first electronics module during an Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Design and…

Selected papers from the state conference of the Illinois Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages include two plenary session presentations and six concurrent session presentations. The plenary session presentations are "Who's In Charge Here?" by Jesan Handscombe and "So What Do You Do In There Anyway?" by Dennis Terdy. The concurrent…

This descriptive study investigates the variability in the curriculum pacing decisions of classroom teachers. The effects on the reading achievement and performance gains of first and second grade students in a compensatory education program program are examined. Data were collected from: (1) the Metropolitan Readiness Test results used to select…