The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was designed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to evaluate the quality, equity, and efficiency of school systems around the world. Specifically, the PISA has assessed 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy on a 3-year cycle, since…

College completion rates in the U.S. are stubbornly low despite the large and rising returns to a college degree. Efforts to increase student success in college have largely ignored a potentially key factor: the instruction that students receive in the sequence of courses that add up to a college education. Improving the quality of instruction may…

This paper describes a model proven to be effective for assessing and documenting evidence of student learning outcomes. Specifically, it will share a model, F.A.M.O.U.S. Copyright ©2008, which is an acronym exemplifying six effective steps for complying with institutional accountability and eternal assessment requirements proscribed by the…

For the last 3 years, more than 80% of the respondents to the "Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools" have stated that they would rather see a school's performance measure based upon "improvement shown by students" than the "percentage passing the test" (Rose & Gallup, 2007, p. 35). If this were to…

Value-added modeling (VAM) to estimate school and teacher effects is currently of considerable interest to researchers and policymakers. Recent reports suggest that VAM demonstrates the importance of teachers as a source of variance in student outcomes. Policymakers see VAM as a possible component of education reform through improved teacher…