This is a methodological critique of research by the Best Practice in Grouping Students (BPGS) project claiming teacher bias in allocating students to first-year secondary school mathematics teaching sets ("British Educational Research Journal," 45(4), 873-897 [EJ1223692]). The research assumes that bias could be shown by non-random…

The challenge of "educational" assessments--assessments that advance the purposes of learning and instruction--is to provide useful information regarding students' progress towards the goals of instruction in ways that are reliable and not idiosyncratic. In this commentary, the author indicates that the challenges are actually more…

This rejoinder keeps the original focus on statistical computing pertaining to the correlation of student achievement between mathematics and science from the Trend in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Albeit the availability of student performance data in TIMSS and the emphasis of the inter-subject connection in the Next Generation Science…

To an unreconstructed cognitivist with experience of developing General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examinations and national tests in mathematics, the three papers which provide the core of this special issue (Morgan & Sfard; Morgan, Morgan & Tang) provided a refreshing opportunity to consider examination items from a…

The growing presence of computer-based testing has brought with it the capability to routinely capture the time that test takers spend on individual test items. This, in turn, has led to an increased interest in potential applications of response time in measuring intellectual ability and achievement. Goldhammer (this issue) provides a very useful…

Linking IEA's international reading assessments across 40 years is an interesting endeavor from several perspectives. Being able to examine trends in reading achievement at the 4th grade over such a long period and relate these to policy changes during that time span is an attractive idea. However, this work brings to the fore many thorny issues…

In this commentary the authors open with the assertion that contemporary education policy, whatever else it may or may not have accomplished, has narrowed the school curriculum by holding schools accountable primarily for their student scores in math and reading. They pursue this argument by pointing out that in surveys, the American public,…

Located in East Oakland, Bridges Academy serves nearly 430 students, the majority of whom are Spanish speakers. Students who are considered socio-economically disadvantaged comprise 98% of the population and English Learners make up 83%. The school also hosts one of Oakland Unified School District's (OUSD) bilingual programs. In 2016, Bridges…

Nancy N. Heilbronner, the associate dean for academic affairs at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York, lectures internationally on topics related to gifted and science education. In this article she writes that we have not fully come to terms with two influential factors that will likely impact future STEM outcomes across the planet: (1) changes…

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] is a global policy organization that includes the United States and about half of the Western Europe countries. It administers international comparison tests, called Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), for 15 year-old students in Mathematics and other subjects. I…

This article comments on an earlier article by professors Yates and Beaudrie (2009) who examined whether online assessment facilitates student cheating and found no evidence of such a greater prevalence of cheating. Professors Yates and Beaudrie are commended for their contribution to this increasingly important area of research. The analysis…

This article presents the author's comments on Randy Elliot Bennett's article "Cognitively Based Assessment of, for, and as Learning" (CBAL), which appeared in issue 8(2-3). The article presents an integrated approach to assessment in which a theory of action for the intended consequences (i.e., benefits) drives both assessments and instructional…

In this paper, the author recommends that every teacher of mathematics should undertake an analysis using their own data. She further recommends that they reflect on the outcomes of their analysis and share it with colleagues. Teachers can look at an individual student's results, variations in results between student sub-groups in their classes,…

This paper examines the impact of public health insurance expansions through both Medicaid and SCHIP on children's educational outcomes, measured by 4th and 8th grade reading and math test scores, available from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). We use a triple difference estimation strategy, taking advantage of the…

Current pupils in Year 10 will not be required to submit any coursework as part of their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) mathematics examination. This development is quite problematic as the removal of the coursework element imply that teachers are incapable of accurately assessing their students' work. In this article, the…