Background/Context: Research on data and evidence use suggest that productive use depends on interactive processes, including sustained interactions between educators and researchers. Recent research on research-practice partnerships (RPPs) has examined conditions under which these sustained collaborations support evidence use. Findings from these…

Background: Value-added modeling (VAM) has been used to rank teachers and assess teacher and school quality. The apparent relationship between value-added teacher rankings and gains in student performance provide a foundation for the view that the contribution of teachers to student performance is the largest factor influencing student…

Context: Generalization is a critical concept in all research designed to generate knowledge that applies to all elements of a unit (population) while studying only a subset of these elements (sample). Commonly applied criteria for generalizing focus on experimental design or representativeness of samples of the population of units. The criteria…

Improving the nation's high schools--particularly those that are low-performing--involves challenges that are far easier to catalog than to surmount. In this chapter, the authors identify a handful of promising approaches that can help to achieve the goal that all students will graduate from high school well-prepared for further learning,…

Background: In the last decade, the effects of teachers on student performance (typically manifested as state-wide standardized tests) have been re-examined using statistical models that are known as value-added models. These statistical models aim to compute the unique contribution of the teachers in promoting student achievement gains from grade…

This commentary frames the importance of the topic of this special issue by highlighting the changes that have occurred in school systems around data use, particularly in large urban districts, and the need for a more rigorous evidence base. Collectively, the articles in this volume provide a jumping-off point for such a research agenda around…

Background/Context: This article explains the idea of a neopragmatic postmodernist test theory and offers some thoughts about what changing notions concerning the nature of and meanings assigned to knowledge imply for educational assessment, present and future. Purpose: Advances in the learning sciences--particularly situative and sociocognitive…

Background/Context: Validity issues are often discussed in technical terms, but the context changes when measures enter broad public debate, and a wider range of interests come into play. Purpose: This article, part of a special section of TCR, considers the political dimensions of validity questions as raised by a keynote address and panel…

Background/Context: Mixed methods research conveys multiple advantages to the study of complex phenomena and large organizations or systems. The benefits are derived from drawing on the strengths of qualitative methods to answer questions about how and why a phenomenon occurs and those of quantitative methods to examine how often a phenomenon…

This chapter summarizes a set of research studies that focus on high school course offerings, takings, and effects. Improving high school experiences and having students graduate from high school ready for college are national priorities under President Obama's Race to the Top initiative. Doing so by expanding access to advanced courses dates back…

Background: The increasing focus on education as an evidence-based practice requires that educators can effectively use data to inform their practice. At the level of classroom instructional decision making, the nature of the specific knowledge and skills teachers need to use data effectively is complex and not well characterized. Being able to…

Background: Institutions of higher education, specifically schools of education, should play a pivotal role in supporting educators' development of data literacy for teaching. While novice teachers are often prepared to use test-based assessment data, they learn these experiences in isolated courses that do not connect to instruction or school…

Background/Context: Contemporary state and national policy rhetoric reflects increased press for "evidence-based" decision making within programs of teacher education, including admonitions that programs develop a "culture of evidence" in making decisions regarding policy and practice. Recent case study reports suggest that…

Background/Context: There is little question that education is changing, seemingly quickly and in some cases dramatically. The mechanisms through which individuals learn are shifting from paper-based ones to electronic media. Simultaneously, the nature of what individuals must learn is evolving, in good part due to an exponential accumulation of…

Background/Context: Principles of evidential reasoning have often been discussed in the context of educational and psychological measurement with respect to construct validity and validity arguments. More recently, Mislevy proposed the metaphor of assessment as an evidentiary argument about students' learning and abilities given their…