Although the number of countries conducting large-scale assessments has increased significantly over the past two decades, this has not necessarily led to the effective use of learning assessment data in policy-making and planning. To better understand the reasons for this, the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP)…

Large-scale learning assessments can be used to generate performance and contextual data on student learning outcomes. They can be national, regional, or international; school based or household based. The UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP-UNESCO) has conducted a qualitative study to explore both how and why learning…

Despite the growing popularity of diagnostic classification models (e.g., Rupp, Templin, & Henson, 2010) in educational and psychological measurement, methods for testing their absolute goodness-of-fit to real data remain relatively underdeveloped. For tests of reasonable length and for realistic sample size, full-information test statistics…

Are U.S. and, in particular, Hoosier students competitive and ready to succeed in an ever-changing and increasingly global economic landscape? This question is frequently considered by K-12 education stakeholders at all levels, including national, state, and local officials. One of the central ways in which education systems can compare themselves…

The establishment of international testing regimes such as the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has provided one way for individual countries to monitor the effectiveness of their educational…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) initiated this special study in an effort to link the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scale to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) scale so that states could compare the performance of their students with that of students in other countries. The…

This study investigates whether a common set of student attitudes and behavioral tendencies can account for academic achievement across different, especially high-performing, countries via analysis of the PISA 2009 international data set. The 13 countries examined are 5 of the top-performing Eastern countries/systems, namely Shanghai China, South…

Drawing on the Programme for International Student Assessment 2003 data set comprising over 190,000 15-year-old students in 25 countries, the current study sought to examine the role of arts-related information and communication technology (ICT) use in students' problem-solving skill and science and mathematics achievement. Structural equation…

This article is a commentary on Australia's involvement in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests. It provides a rationale for Australia's participation in the PISA programme, the influences of PISA involvement on education policies and practices, and considerations and implications for school leaders and education…

When students fail an examination at the end of their first year, they are offered a resit examination, which they merely need to pass to progress into the second year. These resits anecdotally provide a dual purpose of testing that students have achieved the required level of attainment to progress, and incentivising additional effort. This paper…

Many articles and reports have reviewed, researched, and commented on international assessments from the perspective of exploring what is relevant for the United States' education systems. Researchers make claims about whether the top-performing systems have transferable practices or policies that could be applied to the United States. However,…

All educational testing is intended to have consequences, which are assumed to be beneficial, but tests may also have unintended, negative consequences (Messick, 1989). The issue is particularly important in the case of large-scale standardized tests, such as Australia's "National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy" (NAPLAN), the…

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) provides a framework in which over 80 countries collaborate to build advanced global metrics to assess the knowledge, skills and character attributes of the students. The design of assessments poses major conceptual and technical challenges, as successful learning. Beyond a sound…

The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) enables participating countries to monitor 15-year old students' progress in reading, mathematics, and science literacy. The present study investigates persistent factors that contribute to science performance of Turkish students in PISA 2006 and PISA 2009. Additionally, the study…

Monitoring Trends in Educational Growth (MTEG) offers a flexible, collaborative approach to developing and implementing an assessment of learning outcomes that yields high-quality, nationally relevant data. MTEG is a service that involves ACER staff working closely with each country to develop an assessment program that meets the country's…