To assess the meaningfulness of an intervention effect on students' achievement, researchers may apply empirical benchmarks as standards for comparisons, involving normative expectations for students' academic growth as well as performance gaps between weak and average schools or policy-relevant groups (e.g., male and female students, students…

This is the sixth report in a series prepared and delivered to the governor and the Senate and House standing committees responsible for education law in the Michigan legislature. It is designed to help interpret and contextualize assessment results and students' progress toward learning goals in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analyses…

Diagnostic testing on entry to university provides an opportunity for students to ascertain individual strengths and weaknesses and allows course teams to gain insight into the competencies of the whole cohort. Coventry University has been using the same diagnostic test since 1991 and a previous analysis showed students coming to Coventry…

The ongoing literacy crisis in the U.S. highlights an urgent need for effective, scalable literacy instruction. REED Charitable Foundation (RCF) is a non-profit organization that provides structured literacy training informed by Orton-Gillingham, along with ongoing professional coaching and comprehensive implementation support to help all students…

These are the appendixes for the report, "Trends and Gaps in Reading Achievement across Kindergarten and Grade 1 in Two Illinois School Districts." This study examined reading achievement data for kindergarten and grade 1 students in two districts in Illinois: District U-46 (Elgin Area Schools) and District 186 (Springfield Public…

This paper reports the results of a document analysis study examining the policies, trends, and conceptions developed by the OECD in the last 15 years regarding the development and mainstreaming of globalised policies of migrant education. From the process of the analysis, three thematic categories emerged: (i) Socio-economic aspects of education:…

This report provides information on degree productivity for certain undergraduate student populations at Maryland's four-year public institutions. The data address trends from 2014 to 2018 using the measure Degrees per All (DpAll), which is a derivative of the measure degrees per 100 students. DpAll incorporates identifiable characteristics, such…

Effect sizes in the Cohen's d family are often used in education to compare estimates across studies, measures, and sample sizes. For example, effect sizes are used to compare gains in achievement students make over time, either in pre- and post-treatment studies or in the absence of intervention, such as when estimating achievement gaps. However,…

Drawing on a secondary analysis of official statistics, this paper examines the changing scale of the inequality of achievement between White students and their Black British peers who identify their family heritage as Black Caribbean. We examine a 25-year period from the introduction of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), in…

This paper reports the performance of 30 rising seventh-grade girls on a task in which they were asked to order four fractions from least to greatest. Less than three-fifths attained correct answers. The performance gap was widest between students who attended Title I schools and those who did not, the latter being much more likely to attain…

The paper attempts to investigate the influence of textbooks on the results of international assessments such as TIMSS [Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study] and PIRLS [Progress in International Reading Literacy Study]. It tries to consider the role and impact of school textbooks on PIRLS and TIMSS performance across countries. As…

This study sampled the current state of technological literacy in Rhode Island high schools using a new instrument, the Technological Literacy Assessment, which was developed for this study. Gender inequalities in technological literacy were discovered, and possible causes and solutions are presented. This study suggests possible next steps for…

This study addresses missing links in "college for all" debates by investigating gaps between actual and desirable math achievement trajectories for students' college readiness. Linking multiple national data sets across P-16 education levels, the study estimates college readiness benchmarks separately for two-year and four-year college…

For the past 15 years, the New Zealand government has initiated major efforts to reduce persistently large inequities in achievement outcomes in literacy education, including the development of a national literacy strategy. The aim of this study was to provide an analysis of the factors that have contributed to the failure of this strategy and…

This report focuses on the extent to which students who are academically far off track in fourth or eighth grade in Arkansas catch up by eighth or eleventh and twelfth grades. We studied two recent cohorts of Arkansas students whose eighth-grade ACT Explore® scores were more than one standard deviation below the ACT Explore Benchmark scores…