This article describes a modified importance-performance framework for use in evaluation of recreation-based experiential learning programs. Importance-performance analysis (IPA) provides an effective and readily applicable means of evaluating many programs, but the near universal satisfaction associated with recreation inhibits the use of IPA in…

The OECD's international education indicators have become very influential in contemporary education policies. Although these indicators are now routinely, annually published in the form of "Education at a Glance," the calculability upon which the indicators depend was an achievement that involved the mobilisation of a huge machinery of…

A primary goal of assessment is to deliver truthful and clear information that can be used to inform and improve outcomes. Although there are multiple ways to achieve this goal, common approaches can be broken down into two major categories: (1) direct assessment; and (2) indirect assessment. Indirect assessment typically relies on general…

Much of the argument about comparability of examination standards is at cross-purposes; contradictory positions are in fact often both defensible, but they are using the same words to mean different things. To clarify this, two broad conceptualisations of standards can be identified. One sees the standard in the observed phenomena of performance…

Robert Coe has claimed that three broad conceptions of comparability can be identified from the literature: performance, statistical and conventional. Each of these he rejected, in favour of a single, integrated conception which relies upon the notion of a "linking construct" and which he termed "construct comparability".…

Business intelligence (BI) tools offer schools the ability to look beyond a routine statistic, such as what percentage of students have passed a given test. Through data analysis, schools can view specific scores for a select group of students, for example, and compare that data to other groups, classes, or teachers. That is the kind of…

One of the goals in the Commission's Performance Assessment Framework for higher education is that all high school students in California receive an education that gives them the opportunity to enter a college or university. There are many possible measures that could be used to gauge preparation for higher education. These include SAT scores,…

Accountability and performance incentive plans in education are compromised by goal distortion, gaming, and corruption. Education policy makers who design such plans have paid insufficient attention to similar experiences in other fields. This paper describes institutions in health care, job training and welfare administration, and in the private…

As a dimension of a total school reform initiative, the Delcroft School faculty, committed to a more integrative literacy curriculum, implemented a proposed framework to align teaching/learning/assessment. The staff was already committed to implementing the integrative curriculum framework of the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and the new…