The purpose of this mixed methods phenomenological study was to explore the data-driven instructional decisions that elementary teachers make in literacy. Educators have moved towards a culture of being data-driven, and have declared data use in schools to be significant to school improvement and accountability (Marsh, Pane, & Hamilton, 2006).…

There has been little data collected on how much testing actually goes on in America's schools and how the results are used. So in the Spring of 2014, the Council staff developed and launched a survey of assessment practices. This report presents the findings from that survey and subsequent Council analysis and review of the data. It also offers…

This manual provides guidance and documentation for users of the longitudinal kindergarten-fourth grade (K-4) public-use data file of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011), which includes the first release of the public version of the third-grade data. This manual mainly provides information specific…

The "PISA 2009 Technical Report" describes the methodology underlying the PISA 2009 survey. It examines additional features related to the implementation of the project at a level of detail that allows researchers to understand and replicate its analyses. The reader will find a wealth of information on the test and sample design,…

A sample design of schools in an elementary school survey is presented. This sample outlines two states of sampling. First is a sample of 750 schools drawn for purposes of describing compensatory programs. The second-stage sample is a subsample of 200 schools for purposes of performance testing of pupils. (CK)

Procedures for obtaining student samples for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and deriving survey weights for analysis of survey data are described. Sample designs are economically and operationally feasible, and weighting procedures result in increased precision of estimates as they account for the probabilities of student…

The paper initially describes the sources of uncertainty in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data and standard errors. As NAEP sample sizes have increased, greater precision has been attained by the program. For this reason, exclusion effects are increasingly important. Two scenarios of revised NAEP results are presented (for New…

In 2003 the first nationally-comparable science assessment was designed, developed and carried out under the auspices of the national council of education ministers, the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). In 2006 a second science assessment was conducted and, for the first time nationally, the…

In July 2001, the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) agreed to the development of assessment instruments and key performance measures for reporting on student skills, knowledge and understandings in primary science. It directed the newly established Performance Measurement and Reporting Taskforce…