Undergraduate grade point average (GPA) is a commonly employed measure in educational research, serving as a criterion or as a predictor depending on the research question. Over the decades, researchers have used a variety of reliability coefficients to estimate the reliability of undergraduate GPA, which suggests that there has been no consensus…

Building upon the research findings in an earlier ACT Research Report (Westrick, 2016), this study used data from 119,131 students at 26 four-year institutions to make comparisons between STEM majors earning semester GPAs of 3.0 or higher and their STEM peers earning semester GPAs less than 3.0. The results indicate that the higher-performing…

Using date from 120,612 students at 26 four-year institutions, this report provides a description of STEM majors entering four-year postsecondary institutions and those who persist through four years of study. The results indicate that persisting STEM majors enter college with very high levels of pre-college academic achievement as measured by the…

States are increasingly interested in including measures of student achievement growth, or "value- added," in evaluating teachers. Annual state assessments, however, which are the typical measure of student growth, usually cover only reading and math teachers and only in grades 4-8. These state assessments thus cannot …

States and school districts are exploring alternatives to state tests for measuring teachers' contributions to student learning. One approach applies statistical value-added methods to alternative student assessments such as commercially available tests and end-of course tests. The evidence suggests that these methods can reliably distinguish…