Recently, the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) completed a study to connect the scale of the North Carolina State End of Grade (EOG) Testing Program used for North Carolina's mathematics and reading assessments with NWEA's Rausch Interval Unit (RIT) scale. Information from the state assessments was used in a study to establish…

Students in U.S. public schools have consistently recorded substandard scores on measures of school performance in mathematics. This substandard performance could adversely affect the nation's future economic competitiveness, growth, and welfare. Educational and political leaders have sought school reforms that will result in U.S. students scoring…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of activities based on the Multiple Intelligence Theory (MIT) of seventh grade students' conceptual learning and their retention in two consecutive subjects, namely "The Circumference and the Area of a Circle" and "The Surface Area of the Vertical Cylinder". The…

Colleges rely on the ACT exam in their admission decisions to increase their ability to differentiate between students likely to succeed and those that have a high risk of under-performing and dropping out. We show that two of the four sub tests of the ACT, English and Mathematics, are highly predictive of positive college outcomes while the other…

This research provides insight into one US state's effort to incorporate higher-order thinking on its Algebra I End-of-Course tests. To facilitate the inclusion of higher-order thinking, the state used "Dimensions of Thinking" (Marzano et al., 1988) and "Bloom's Taxonomy" (Bloom et al., 1956). An analysis of Algebra I test…

If numerical reasoning items are administered under time limits, will two dimensions be required to account for the responses, a numerical ability dimension and a speed dimension? A total of 182 college students answered 74 numerical reasoning items. Every item was taken with and without time limits by half the students. Three psychometric models…

For large-scale assessments, usually booklet designs administering the same item at different positions within a booklet are used. Therefore, the occurrence of position effects influencing the difficulty of the item is a crucial issue. Not taking learning or fatigue effects into account would result in a bias of estimated item difficulty. The…

We focus on the identification of differential item functioning (DIF) when more than two groups of examinees are considered. We propose to consider items as elements of a multivariate space, where DIF items are outlying elements. Following this approach, the situation of multiple groups is a quite natural case. A robust statistics technique is…

Background: Educators, researchers and policy-makers worldwide continue to struggle to understand the changes needed for improving educational outcomes and attainment for students, particularly in content areas such as mathematics and science that are essential for developing a highly skilled workforce. Given the continuing emphasis on linking…

The aim of this study is to examine the mathematical problem-solving beliefs and problem-solving success levels of primary school teacher candidates through the variables of academic success and gender. The research was designed according to the mixed methods technique in which qualitative and quantitative methods are used together. The working…

The purpose of this article is to identify the order of significance of the variables that affect science and mathematics achievement in middle school students. For this aim, the study deals with the relationship between science and math in terms of different angles using the perspectives of multiple causes-single effect and of multiple…

Data on students' perceptions of teacher social support, academic functioning, and social-emotional functioning were collected from a sample of 796 7th and 8th grade middle school students using the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale (CASSS; Malecki, Demaray, & Elliott, 2000), Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) and school records, and…

This research investigated the viability of learning by self-managing split-attention worked examples as an alternative to learning by studying instructor-managed integrated worked examples. Secondary school students learning properties of angles on parallel lines were taught to integrate spatially separated text and diagrammatic information by…

This study investigates approaches, strategies and models used by prospective primary school teachers in responding to real-world problems. The research was carried out with 82 participants. Data were collected through written-exam and semi-structured interviews; and they were analysed using content and discourse analysis methods. Most of the…

This study examines the roles played by student characteristics, school resources and practices, peer effects, and province fixed effects in accounting for differences in the academic outcomes of private and public high school students. Private high school students score significantly higher than public high school students on reading,…