Educational systems typically contain a large pool of items (questions, problems). Using data mining techniques we can group these items into knowledge components, detect duplicated items and outliers, and identify missing items. To these ends, it is useful to analyze item similarities, which can be used as input to clustering or visualization…

Latent variable models, such as the popular Knowledge Tracing method, are often used to enable adaptive tutoring systems to personalize education. However, finding optimal model parameters is usually a difficult non-convex optimization problem when considering latent variable models. Prior work has reported that latent variable models obtained…

Implementation of effective interventions relies on the use of assessment data to adequately describe the learning problem and offer potential solutions. The use of curriculum-based assessment and measurement when combined with the learning hierarchy could offer a paradigm for decision making based on a skill-by-treatment interaction.…

Educational systems in the United States are generating vast amounts of data on student achievement. This may provide researchers and policy makers with long sought-after insight on the factors explaining student performance. This study uses recent data from Washington 10th graders to examine why some students learned more math than others.…

We propose the development of a "population" of high-quality assessment tasks that cover the performance goals set out in the "Common Core State Standards for Mathematics." The population will be published. Tests are drawn from this population as a structured random sample guided by a "balancing algorithm."

The purpose of this study was to explore a cognitive approach to analyzing students' written responses to mathematics performance assessments to inform learning, instruction, and assessment design and development. The existing data used in this study were seventh grade students' written responses to, and item scores on, four released mathematics…

Observation measures of instructional quality tend to fall into two broad categories--those for use across subject areas and those intended for use in specific subject areas. The move toward content-specific measures is a result of research suggesting that effective teaching looks different across subject areas and that both content knowledge and…

Following the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) recommendation to use real data, an example is presented in which simple linear regression is used to evaluate the effect of the Montreal Protocol on atmospheric concentration of chlorofluorocarbons. This simple set of data, obtained from a public archive, can…

Based on the results of a generalizability study (G study) of measures of teacher knowledge for teaching mathematics developed at The National Center for Research, on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) at the University of California, Los Angeles, this report provides evidence that teachers are better at drawing reasonable…

The 11th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2018) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Templeton Landing in Buffalo, New York. This year's EDM conference was highly competitive, with 145 long and short paper submissions. Of these, 23 were accepted as full papers and 37…

The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the use of interim assessments and the policy supports that promote use to improve instruction, focusing on elementary school mathematics. The authors use the term "interim assessments" to refer to assessments that a) evaluate student knowledge and skills, typically within a limited…

The 10th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2017) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Optics Velley Kingdom Plaza Hotel, Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. This years conference features two invited talks by: Dr. Jie Tang, Associate Professor with the Department of Computer…

The Mathematical Association of America Guidelines for Programs and Departments in Undergraduate Mathematical Sciences recommends the use of a periodic external review as an assessment tool to evaluate the mathematics program and the department. However, there is surprisingly little information on how to conduct an external review for a…

The sample assessment items in this volume are sorted according to the strands of number and operations, algebra, geometry, measurement, and data analysis and probability. Because one goal of assessment is to determine students' abilities to communicate mathematically, the writing team suggests ways to extend or modify multiple-choice and…

Outlines differences between classical statistics and exploratory data analysis. Provides examples in the use of the exploratory techniques. (YP)