What is the best use for tests? Testing should provide insight and information to educators and students. The primary purpose of testing is to inform teaching and learning. Yet, for too many schools, testing has been perverted to accommodate only measurement. Lesson plans are built around helping students pass the tests. In many instances, schools…

In meeting the inclusion provisions for English language learners (ELLs) in state assessment systems, it is important to assure the meaningful representation of what students know and can do. States have relied on accommodations as one of the principle means to increase the validity of ELL test scores. Yet current knowledge about effective…

The author investigated the impact of assessment methods on student performance on accounting tests. Specifically, the author used analysis of variance to determine whether the use of computer-based tests instead of paper-based tests affects students' traditional test scores in accounting examinations. The author included 2 independent variables,…

The purpose of this study is to provide empirical benchmarks of the conditional reliabilities of state tests for samples of the student population defined by ability level. Given that many educational interventions are targeted for samples of low performing students, schools, or districts, the primary goal of this research is to determine how…

Universities UK organised a seminar in Brighton in April 2010, bringing together vice-chancellors, researchers and policymakers to take a close look at the implications of the global and national economic crisis for both the UK economy and higher education. It also examined the changing nature of student demand in a post-recession economy. This…

The 2008-2009 school year marked the second year of the 4-year pilot of the AISD REACH program. This report is the second in a series of reports documenting the progress of AISD REACH toward key program goals. [For the first report, see ED628201.]

In this article, the author explores what Assessing Pupils' Progress (APP) is about. He contends that the predilection for testing is a catastrophe as far as the teaching and learning of mathematics is concerned; it is an outcome of the drive for collecting so-called "data" on pupils. What those people, who should know better, either choose to…

The effect of feedback and materials on perceptual learning was examined in listeners with normal hearing who were exposed to cochlear implant simulations. Generalization was most robust when feedback paired the spectrally degraded sentences with their written transcriptions, promoting mapping between the degraded signal and its acoustic-phonetic…

The author titled this article "No Child Left Thinking" because for the past 10 years he has been studying the effects of education initiatives such as the U.S. "No Child Left Behind Act" or the various provincial testing and accountability policies in Canada and their impact on teachers' ability to teach critical thinking and…

The purpose of this study was to see whether different types of background music affect the performance of a reading comprehension task in Taiwanese college students. There are two major research questions in this study. First, this study tries to find out whether listening to music affect the learner's concentration when they are doing a task…

Background: From the perspective of self-regulated learning, the interplay between learners' individual characteristics and the context of testing have been emphasized for assessing learning outcomes. Aims: The present study examined metacognitive processes in children's test-taking behaviour and explored their impacts on performance. Further, it…

This paper discusses trends in contemporary Danish early childhood education and care (ECEC). Data are sourced from various policy documents, along with material from ongoing research projects in which the authors are involved. It is claimed that contemporary policy on Danish day care services has a tendency to emphasize narrow curriculum…

In this powerful collection of personal accounts, successful and respected teachers from across the country reveal how recent education policies have played out in their schools and classrooms in negative and counterproductive ways, and offer teacher-led alternatives for providing equitable, engaging, and empowering education. Framed by critical…

In the last few decades high-stakes testing has become more political than educational. The Districts within Arizona are bound by the mandates of both AZ LEARNS and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. At the time of this writing, both legislative mandates relied on the Arizona Instrument for Measuring Standards (AIMS) as State Tests for gauging…

The public debate about the success and expansion of charter schools often seems to gravitate toward a tiny handful of empirical studies, when there is, in fact, a relatively well-developed literature focused on whether these schools generate larger testing gains among their students relative to their counterparts in comparable regular public…