This study explores the extent to which student, family, peer, and school factors predict (a) whether students take "Advanced Placement®" ("AP®") courses, International Baccalaureate (IB) courses, and dual enrollment courses and (b) in models limited to course takers, how many courses they completed. Our findings, based on a…

This study examined how high school course-taking patterns (i.e., career and technical education [CTE] vs. academic vs. no concentration), personal characteristics embedded in a social cognitive theory framework (e.g., self-efficacy, academic expectations), and contextual variables (e.g., parental expectations, socioeconomic status [SES]) interact…

The "ETS"® Proficiency Profile (EPP), a college-level assessment, has been widely used to evaluate general education student learning outcomes (SLOs) in college. The purpose of this study was to investigate validity evidence for the EPP by evaluating the relationship with outcomes such as student retention, cumulative grade point average…

This report investigates the prediction of labor force status using observed variables, such as gender, age, and immigrant status, and more importantly, measured skill variables, including literacy proficiency and a categorical rating of educational attainment based on the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), the 2003 Adult Literacy…

In this study, we investigated gender and minority achievement gaps on 8th-grade science items employing a multilevel item response methodology. Both gaps were wider on physics and earth science items than on biology and chemistry items. Larger gender gaps were found on items with specific topics favoring male students than other items, for…

Recent research has highlighted the critical problem of high rates of "disconnected youth"--youth and young adults who are neither employed nor in school. Practitioners, scholars, policymakers, and a range of stakeholders express mounting concern that disconnected youth are a societal burden that costs countries trillions of dollars.…

There is a growing concern that when scores from low-stakes assessments are reported without considering student motivation as a construct of interest, biased conclusions about how much students know will result. Low motivation is a problem particularly relevant to low-stakes testing scenarios, which may be low stakes for the test taker but have…

Language test preparation has often been studied within the consequential validity framework in relation to ethics, equity, fairness, and washback of assessment. The use of independent and integrated speaking tasks in the "TOEFL iBT"® test represents a significant development and innovation in assessing speaking ability in academic…

Community colleges currently enroll about 44% of the undergraduate students in the United States and are rapidly expanding. It is of critical importance to obtain direct evidence of student learning to see if students receive adequate training at community colleges. This study investigated the 10-year trends of community college students' (n =…

This report reviews the literature on noncognitive and other background predictors (e.g., personality, attitudes, and interests) as it pertains to graduate education. The first section reviews measures typically used in studies of graduate school outcomes, such as attrition and time to degree. A review of qualities faculty members and…

GRE verbal and quantitative scores and undergraduate grade point average were evaluated as predictors of multiple measures of long-term graduate school success. The measures of success were cumulative graduate grade point average and faculty ratings on three student characteristics: mastery of the discipline, professional productivity, and…