Curriculum and its associated assessment are at the heart of educational systems worldwide. In light of perceived national educational stagnation or decline, as well as of performance in international league tables such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), countries have embarked on curriculum and assessment reforms. This is…

Four-year colleges and universities that espouse teaching as their primary mission bear a responsibility to safeguard the welfare of their students as clients of teaching. This responsibility takes the form of a moral imperative. Faculty members hold considerable autonomy in the professional choices they make in their teaching. As a consequence,…

Inclusion of students with disabilities in district-wide and state assessments is mandated by federal regulations, and teachers sometimes play an important role in rating these students' work. In this study, trained teachers rated student proficiency in performance assessments in language arts and mathematics in third, fifth, and ninth grades. The…

The present paper departs from the hypothesis that successful teachers are characterized by being able to manipulate student effort. Grading is identified as a potential teachers' tool, and its quantitative importance is investigated by estimation of an education production function. The main econometric problems are omitted variables biases due…

The "Student Evaluation of Instruction" (SEOI) was administered to all full-time and part-time faculty. Approximately 91,530 surveys were sent out in 4,980 envelopes; 58,604 surveys were returned to the Office of Institutional Research. The return rate for the paper surveys was 64% including late submissions. Instructors' reports were…

Assessment theorists and academics alike espouse the importance of feedback on performance assessment tasks for supporting improvement and progress in student learning achievement. Despite these espoused ideals, students claim a lack of adequate, timely feedback and their teachers claim that students fail to heed the advice given. This paper…

Describes a preliminary analysis of grades submitted over three semesters by six full-time and twelve part-time humanities faculty to determine if differences could be distinguished by faculty status, gender, age, or course time (day or evening). Part-time faculty consistently graded higher than full-time faculty, whereas grading patterns could…