Digital skills are increasingly important for labour market outcomes and social participation. Do they also matter for academic performance? This paper investigates the effects of digital literacy on educational outcomes by merging data from the Italian National Assessment in secondary schools with an original data-set on performance tests of…

In light of the emergence of statistical analysis techniques based on data mining in education sciences, and the potential they offer to detect non-trivial information in large databases, this paper presents a procedure used to detect factors linked to academic achievement in large-scale assessments. The study is based on a non-experimental,…

Background/Context: Two key uses of international assessments of achievement have been (a) comparing country performances for identifying the countries with the best education systems and (2) generating insights about effective policy and practice strategies that are associated with higher learning outcomes. Do country rankings really reflect the…

This study examines factors affecting students' performances in an Introductory Sociology course over five semesters. Employing simple and ordered logit regression models, the author explains final grades by focusing on individual demographic and educational characteristics that students bring into the classroom. The results show that a student's…

The authors investigated the results of the Educational Testing Service Major Field Test (ETS-MFT) administered to business majors at a U.S. state university. Longitudinal trends and cross-sectional differences are documented, including significant performance differences among students of different majors. Findings suggest that a cohort affect…

The purpose of this paper is to identify school effects on student performance for tertiary entrance in Australia, taking into account student-level predictors using longitudinal data from the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. It finds that aspects of schooling, such as positive attitudes to school and disciplinary…

This "Practitioner's Guide to Growth Models," commissioned by the Technical Issues in Large-Scale Assessment (TILSA) and Accountability Systems & Reporting (ASR), collaboratives of the "Council of Chief State School Officers," describes different ways to calculate student academic growth and to make judgments about the…

Background: Teacher-related factors such as gender, experience, conceptions related to mathematics, instructional practices have effects with various magnitudes on students' mathematics achievement. Classroom related factors such as class size, class climate and limitations to teaching and their relation to mathematics achievement have also been…

Using student achievement data from British Columbia, Canada, this study is an exploration of the differences that lie within the private school sector using hierarchical linear modeling to analyze the data. The analysis showed that when controlling for language, parents' level of educational attainment, and prior achievement, the private school…

Under No Child Left Behind, urban school districts have increasingly turned to interim assessments, administered at regular intervals, to help gauge student progress in advance of annual state exams. These assessments have spawned growing debate among educators, assessment experts, and the testing industry: are they worth the significant…

Education professionals and policy makers have been working to "close the achievement gap" for some time. Differences in school performance for children from diverse and different family backgrounds have been at the core of past and present social, political, and education reform initiatives and practices. Previous research suggests that…

Are teacher salaries related to school quality in terms of student academic achievement and teacher retention? Are teacher salaries important factors influencing teacher job satisfaction? Is teacher job satisfaction related to retention? This research addressed these questions using international and national data. First, the literature will be…

Past estimates of the effect of family income on child development have often been plagued by endogeneity and measurement error. In this paper, we use two simulated instrumental variables strategies to estimate the causal effect of income on children's math and reading achievement. Our identification derives from the large, non-linear changes…

During the 2009-2010 school year, Marzano Research Laboratory (MRL) was commissioned by Promethean Ltd. to conduct a second year evaluation study of the effects of Promethean ActivClassroom on student academic achievement. This report describes the findings from the second year study along with aggregate findings from the first and second year…

Using unique administrative data on Chicago public high school students and their teachers, we are able to estimate the importance of teachers on student mathematical achievement. We find that teachers are educationally and statistically important. To be sure, sampling variation and other measurement issues can strongly influence estimates of…