This first-ever look at the national charter school pipeline--what schools are being proposed and by whom--reveals a diverse sector, with a tremendous variety of applicants and school models. Working with Public Impact, National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) collected and analyzed nearly 3,000 charter school applications…

The importance of teacher effectiveness is well supported by studies that document variation in teachers' abilities to contribute to student achievement gains. All else being equal, students taught by some teachers experience greater achievement gains than do students taught by other teachers. In response to initiatives to increase educator…

Speaking proceeds under the constraint of time. While speaking, speakers are under constant pressure to follow the message being received and to formulate rapid responses to their partners. In the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) Speaking Test, the communicative nature of the interview creates an ideal situation for applicants…

Researchers, educators, and policymakers are focusing more on student engagement as the key to addressing low achievement, student boredom and alienation, and high dropout rates (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, and Paris 2004). As schools and districts seek to increase engagement, it is important for them to understand how it has been defined and to assess…

A report about college students and their information-seeking strategies and research difficulties, including findings from 8,353 survey respondents from college students on 25 campuses distributed across the U.S. in spring of 2010, as part of Project Information Literacy. Respondents reported taking little at face value and were frequent…

This fact sheet summarizes data gathered in the 2012 survey of National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant recipients. Conducted by EvaluATE, the evaluation resource center for the ATE program located at The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University, this was the thirteenth annual survey of ATE projects…

This fact sheet summarizes data gathered in the 2011 survey of National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant recipients. Conducted by EvaluATE, the evaluation resource center for the ATE program located at The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University, this was the twelfth annual survey of ATE projects and…

This fact sheet summarizes data gathered in the 2010 survey of National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant recipients. Conducted by EvaluATE, the evaluation resource center for the ATE program located at The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University, this was the eleventh annual survey of ATE projects and…

Legislation passed during the 2001 Iowa legislative session established the Student Achievement and Teacher Quality Program, Iowa Code Section 284.12(1). This legislation requires the Iowa Department of Education (DE) to annually report the statewide progress on the following: student achievement scores in mathematics and reading at the fourth and…

This fact sheet summarizes data gathered in the 2009 survey of National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant recipients. Conducted by The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University, this was the tenth annual survey of ATE projects and centers. Included here are statistics about the program's grantees and…

Although computer-based testing is becoming popular, many of these tests are limited to the use of selected-response item formats due to the difficulty in mechanically scoring constructed-response items. This limitation is unfortunate because many constructs, such as writing proficiency, can be measured more directly using items that require…

The purposes of this study were, first, to gather descriptive information regarding the measurement and evaluation skills actually utilized by junior high school teachers and, second, to identify differences among elementary, junior, and senior high school teachers. A questionnaire of 41 statements assessed on a five-point scale the usefulness to…

This study was undertaken to test the hypothesis that items of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) containing reference to American people, places, customs, etc., tend to favor examinees who have spent some time living in the United States. Two samples of examinees were drawn from the March 1987 TOEFL administration, one tested in…

This paper presents the results of ongoing analyses of the reliability of the System for Teaching and Learning Assessment and Review (STAR) as a comprehensive measure of classroom teaching and learning for making teacher certification decisions. Focus was on the effects of high stakes assessment conditions for certification on the generalizability…