After many previous failed attempts to reach illiterate adults, the award-winning South African "Kha Ri Gude" mass literacy campaign, launched in 2008, undertook to ensure that learners seized the opportunity to learn--for many adults, this was a "last chance". Written from an insider perspective by the campaign's founding…

International large-scale assessments (ILSAs) play a distinct role in the United States' decentralized federal education system. Separate from national and state assessments, they offer an external, objective measure for the United States to assess student performance comparatively with other countries and over time. The US engagement in ILSAs…

Public schools face raised performance expectations on group-administered achievement tests. In response, educators have implemented various preparation strategies to ready students. However, the research community largely ignores the impact of setting on test performance. This randomized field trial assesses whether or not there were significant…

Stanford Achievement Test scores of 1,434 elementary-level students already placed in either regular or special education programs were arranged according to four cutoff points: 20th, 15th, 10th, and 5th percentiles. This identification method, setting the cutoff at the 5 percent level, is proposed as a preliminary screening device for special…

When selecting standardized reading tests for purposes of decision making, the school psychologist must answer several questions, such as "What reading skills do I wish to assess?" or "How do I judge if the test is technically adequate?" Recommendations for test selection are made within the context of these questions.…