PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment) is a triennial survey of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds. It is the product of collaboration between participating countries and economies through the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), and draws on leading international expertise to develop valid…

In December 1991, the first of a series of Secretary's Conferences on Improving Mathematics and Science Education was held in Washington, D.C., to discuss methods of attaining the fourth National Education Goal of being the world leader in mathematics and science education by the year 2000 as set by President Bush and the nation's governors. More…

The purpose of this study was to use secondary analysis of an Australian database known as the Second International Science Study (SISS) to examine the role of student, school and home factors in explaining student differences in science achievement, especially on sex differences. Student characteristics investigated in the study included home…

Results are now available from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) with its 5 main components, 41 cooperating countries, over 500,000 participants, and coverage of the full spectrum of mathematics and science from grades 4 through 12. American educators, parents, and policy makers have found the results to be both…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Summary Data Tables on CD-ROM present mathematics and science results from the NAEP 1996 State Assessments. Mathematics results from 1990 and 1992 assessments are also provided for the nation and for states that participated in either or both of the assessments. The student, teacher, and…

An empirical approach is adopted in this paper to explore a possible model for prediction of students' science achievement in China and the United States. Construction of the model is based on the ninth-grade data base from Phase 2 of the Second International Education Association Science Study (SISS) in the United States and the SISS Extension…

International comparisons show that U.S. students perform well in reading, less well in science, and more poorly still in mathematics. Researchers have found that several factors in combination appear responsible for the complex pattern of achievement, and no quick fix appears available for problem areas. Research suggests that it is quality and…

In this paper, performance assessments are cast within a sampling framework. A performance assessment score is viewed as a sample of student performance drawn from a complex universe defined by a combination of all possible tasks, occasions, raters, and measurement methods. Using generalizability theory, the authors present evidence bearing on the…

The aim of this study was to compare the effects of computer-based learning and traditional method on students' attitudes and achievement towards analytical chemistry. Students from Chemistry Education Department at Dokuz Eylul University (D.E.U) were selected randomly and divided into three groups; two experimental (Eg-1 and Eg-2) and a control…

This report, submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, contains summary details of Delaware students' growth in the areas of reading, mathematics, writing, science and social studies. The results reported herein are part of a long-term effort to gather data on Delaware students' educational progress and use the data to inform decisions about…

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) covered five different grade levels, with more than 40 countries collecting data in more than 30 different languages. More than a million students were tested. The present report contains the TIMSS results for students in the final year of secondary school. Mathematics and science…

In 1996, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessed the knowledge and skills of students in the areas of earth science, life science, and physical science. It also collected information related to the background of students (grades 4, 8, and 12), their teachers (grades 4 and 8), and the schools they attended (grades 4, 8, and…

The present study was conducted on 400 students (200 Boys and 200 Girls) selected from Senior Secondary School of A. M. U. Aligarh; India to establish the prognostic value of different measures of cognition, personality and demographic variables for success at Higher Secondary level in Science stream. The score obtained on different variables are…

Discusses the importance to science departments of processes used to track student performance and how assessment data are used. Adding value has two principal aspects. The first is quantitative, where gains in knowledge, skills, and understanding demonstrated by students are measured. The second is a cross-curricular aspect, evaluating the…

Comparison of a culturally-sensitive activity-based outdoor science curriculum with a traditional textbook and classroom approach found that fourth-grade American Indian students in the activity-based group had significantly higher science achievement scores than those in the control group. There were no significant differences between Indian and…