As implementation of the "Next Generation Science Standards" moves forward, there is a need for new assessments that can measure students' integrated three-dimensional science learning. The National Research Council has suggested that these assessments be multicomponent tasks that utilize a combination of item formats including…

In an era of governmentally controlled education systems sustained through performance-based funding metrics, the value of higher education is often considered justified by socioeconomic impact and degree employability. Although modern academia traces its roots to the humanities and liberal arts for its foundation, degrees without direct job…

We combine satellite-based pollution data and test scores from over 10,000 U.S. school districts to estimate the relationship between air pollution and test scores. To deal with potential endogeneity we instrument for air quality using: (1) year-to-year coal production variation; and (2) a shift-share instrument that interacts fuel shares used for…

When school personnel and parents complete school climate surveys, results can inform team action planning to improve perceptions of school climate. Further, school climate data can assist in considering questions related to equity, disproportionality, and cultural responsiveness and appropriateness. The freely-available School Climate Survey…

This report describes the impact of the 2021 AISD multilingual summer school program on incoming kindergarten and 1st-grade emergent bilingual students' (N = 933) fall academic performance. Relative to matched comparison groups, students who attended summer school were significantly more likely to score on-track on TX-KEA in kindergarten. While…

The main objective of this dissertation was to investigate factors that affect decision-makers' trust in and reliance on algorithmic predictions as decision aids in the context of college admission prediction tasks. College admission officers often made predictions about the applicants' future success based on multiple pieces of available…

The purpose of this quantitative research was to examine parents, students, and staff perceptions of school climate in urban middle schools and explore if relationships exist between perceived school climate, perceived reading instruction, and reading performance as measured by the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR). The…

Despite the increasing demand for diagnostic information, observed subscores have been often reported to lack adequate psychometric qualities such as reliability, distinctiveness, and validity. Therefore, several statistical techniques based on CTT and IRT frameworks have been proposed to improve the quality of subscores. More recently, DCM has…

The World Bank and other global actors were impressed by the fact that the relatively poor Southeast Asian country Vietnam made significant success in the PISA evaluation in 2012, placing ahead of several Western countries like the US, UK, Australia, and Sweden. In this article, recent research that focuses on educational achievement, specifically…

The purpose of this mixed-method study is to determine the effect of integrating Engineering design on high school students' scientific reasoning and science achievement. Thirteen eleventh-grade students participated in this eight-week long study. The intervention engaged students in the Engineering design of a functional Dialysis model. Students…

This study examined the effect of Vygotskian-based professional development on the CLASS Instructional Support Teacher Self-Assessment scores of preschool teachers in a rural setting. Specifically, it examined the efficacy of preschool teachers in their ability to provide instructional support to their students prior to participating in…

This study used a quasi-experimental approach with a nonequivalent control group posttest-only design to examine the effectiveness of a virtual escape room on the acquisition of nursing students' knowledge related to leadership nursing content. Additionally, the study measured the students' perceptions of the escape room activity as an effective…

Purpose: This study reports the psychometric development of the Cantonese versions of the English Computerized Revised Token Test (CRTT) for persons with aphasia (PWAs) and healthy controls (HCs). Method: The English CRTT was translated into standard Chinese for the Reading--Word Fade version (CRTT-R-[subscript WF]-Cantonese) and into formal…

This brief highlights lessons learned from New Mexico's investment in community schools. Drawing on profiles of three sites that received state implementation grants, we find that community schools implementing the key practices at the center of New Mexico's community schools framework are seeing improvement across a range of indicators, including…

What benefits are associated with having more highly educated parents? How do these benefits vary from country to country? Promoting equal opportunity for individuals in the face of a wide array of life situations has a strong moral, economic, and societal grounding. Understanding the lasting effects of parental education on adults offers critical…