The majority of students from elementary to tertiary levels have misunderstandings and challenges acquiring various statistical concepts and skills. However, the existing statistics assessment frameworks challenge practice in a classroom setting. The purpose of this research is to develop and validate a statistical thinking assessment tool…

This study investigates the benefits of no-stakes educational testing during students' summer vacation as a strategy to mitigate summer learning loss. Fifty-one students in Grades 3-8 from the Every Child Valued (ECV) and Lawrence Community Center (LCC) summer programs in Lawrenceville, NJ, took short, online assessments throughout the summer,…

Test-based accountability as well as value-added asessments and much experimental and quasi-experimental research in education rely on achievement tests to measure student skills and knowledge. Yet, we know little regarding fundamental properties of these tests, an important example being the extent of measurement error and its implications for…

In recent decades, much attention has been focused on student achievement in the United States. Many policy initiatives have been attempted in an effort to bolster achievement, including increasing school revenue, decreasing class size, expanding early childhood programs, and introducing vouchers and charter schools, to name a few, but not all of…

To insure academic success for students with learning disabilities, it is critical that educators are able to make timely and effective instructional decisions. The focus of this study was to evaluate the relationship and effectiveness of two different progress monitoring tools, a measure of oral reading fluency and the Wilson Reading System's…

A problem exists in grading practices accurately measuring student achievement. Both students' academic achievements and nonacademic factors, such as effort, homework completion, and behaviors continue to factor into grades. This combination can lead to inaccurate representation of true academic ability, rendering a grade useless. While…

Traditional measures of teachers' competency have been widely criticized for their lack of authenticity and predictive validity. There is little evidence regarding the technical soundness of traditional teacher licensure tests and little research documenting the validity of such tests for identifying competent teachers or effective teaching.…

This paper reports on an analysis of large-scale assessments of Grades 5-8 students' writing across 10 provinces and 2 territories in Canada. Theory, classroom practice, and the contributions and constraints of large-scale writing assessment are brought together with a focus on Grades 5-8 writing in order to provide both a broad view of…

This paper estimates the impact of the Michigan school finance reform, "Proposal A," on education inputs and test scores. Using a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, I find that school districts in Michigan used the increase in educational spending generated through "Proposal A" to increase teacher salaries and reduce…

This paper will describe the relationships between research on learning and its application in assessment models and operational systems. These have been topics of research at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) for more than 20 years and form a significant part of the intellectual foundation of…

Educational game designs must balance the often conflicting values of game designers, instructional designers, and content experts. In order to reach this balance, however, colleagues should adopt development strategies that already inform the design of commercial computer games. Commercial game designers recognize that great games are not created…

"Miracle" is a word you would expect to hear from people familiar with the Assumption Catholic School story--but don?t wait for it. More likely you will hear a name: Mary Anne Stanton. In just more than five years, Stanton has led Assumption and 12 other Catholic schools from high-poverty Washington, D.C. neighborhoods into a…

The present study reports results from a quasi-controlled empirical investigation addressing the impact on student test scores when using fixed form computer based testing (CBT) versus paper and pencil (P&P) testing as the delivery mode to assess student mathematics achievement in a state's large scale assessment program. Grade 7 students…