Do grade configurations affect student academic performance? To bring new evidence to this question, I use recent district-by-grade data for nearly the entire United States that contain measures of test score achievement and rates of school switching induced by grade configuration. Past research has found that student performance, is, on average,…

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the extent to which Hispanic students differed in their performance on the Texas state-mandated Algebra I End-of-Course exam by their at-risk status. Specifically examined was the degree to which the at-risk status of Hispanic students was related to three grade level…

Older schoolchildren typically perform better on academic achievement tests than younger students in the same classes. Studies looking at an array of countries, grade spans, and subjects have found that age differences of even a few months do matter. Relative-age effects introduce an arbitrary bias that favors older students. These effects are a…

Because high-stakes testing for school accountability does not begin until third grade, accountability ratings for elementary schools do not directly measure students' academic progress in grades K through 2. While it is possible that children's test scores in grades 3 and above are highly correlated with children's outcomes in the untested…

Fewer than half of students demonstrated proficiency on Michigan state-administered summative assessments at the end of third grade at a rural, Title I school in Michigan. The purpose of this quantitative study was to compare reading fluency gains between grade levels (i.e., kindergarten, first, and second grades) in an effort to better understand…

"A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless" (Theodore Roosevelt). Humans both have been affected by environmental events and have affected their environments by a variety of activities since man has been on earth. However, because of the lack of population for a long time and…

The stability of educational test results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) over 15 years was examined, and the influence of demographics and social capital was assessed, as was the impact of educational reforms. The test results were remarkably stable, with correlations up to 0.99 for country-level results over 2…

Multiple studies propose that English proficiency dictates English language learners' (ELLs) performances on mathematics assessments. The current study investigates the predictive power of English proficiency on mathematics scores, while controlling for gender, socioeconomic status (SES), and grade level among ELLs at a south Florida elementary…

Subject-specific self-efficacy is a measure of confidence in one's own ability to complete tasks related to that subject. This confidence does not necessarily reflect actual ability in the subject and can be an over- or underestimate of true ability. We use nationally representative samples of 15-year-old students from the US to measure the degree…

The "Woodcock-Johnson III" Tests of Achievement grade norms versus age norms were examined in the calculation of discrepancy scores in 202 college students. Difference scores were calculated between the "Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-3rd Edition" Full Scale IQ and the "Woodcock-Johnson III" Total Achievement,…

It is often assumed that a vertical scale is necessary when value-added models depend upon the gain scores of students across two or more points in time. This article examines the conditions under which the scale transformations associated with the vertical scaling process would be expected to have a significant impact on normative interpretations…

This dissertation uses data from the evaluation of a Striving Readers project to examine the associations between levels of implementation of different components of Scholastic's "READ 180" and student achievement as measured on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) reading assessment. The approach was hierarchical linear modeling using…

Using an equity perspective, this article compares the education systems of the United States and the Netherlands. Existing data examining student demographics, the organizational structures, curricula, funding, and student outcomes are examined. The Netherlands appears to be getting a "bigger bang for their buck." We make the case that…

This report presents data on home schooling in the state of Arkansas that covers: students withdrawn from home school; home school student count by county, district, and grade level; and home school enrollments by grade and gender. The report contains the texts of the Arkansas Code Annotated Section 6-15-501 through Section 6-15-508 Home School…

Measurement scales developed using Thurstone and item-response theory (IRT) methods of scaling achievement tests for the same single-level data were compared for approximately 4,000 high school students taking the Iowa Tests of Educational Development in 1975. Results of both approaches indicate that variability increases as grade level increases.…