In spring 2010, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) began planning a pilot of an application for the Apple iPad, "HMH Fuse: Algebra 1," which was then in development. The application was to be piloted in four California school districts during the 2010-2011 school year. HMH contracted with Empirical Education Inc. to conduct a one-year…

Interest in Student Growth Modeling (SGM) and Value Added Modeling (VAM) arises from educators concerned with measuring the effectiveness of teaching and other school activities through changes in student performance as a companion and perhaps even an alternative to status. Several formal statistical models have been proposed for year-to-year…

The effect of a 15- to 24-month in-service professional development (PD) program on state accountability mathematics test scores for middle school students was examined using a quasi-experimental design. Middle level mathematics teachers (n = 128) from 7 school districts and 64 middle schools volunteered for a PD sequence of content-oriented…

The number of schools that have access to computers and the Internet has increased rapidly since the beginning of the 1990s. However, evidence of their effectiveness as pedagogical tools to acquire reading and math skills is still the object of debate. We use repeated cross-section data from Brazil to evaluate the effect of the availability of a…

This proposal advocates the position that the use of confidence wagering (CW) during testing can predict the accuracy of a student's test answer selection during between-subject assessments. Data revealed female students were more favorable to taking risks when making CW and less inclined toward risk aversion than their male counterparts. Student…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) continues to be interested in addressing the issue identified by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). With the release of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading and mathematics assessments, NCES again had the opportunity to measure the status and change in…

The purpose of this study is to validate a test anxiety scale for Italian students. The scale is part of a questionnaire administered after the students' annual competence test by the National Institute for the Educational Evaluation of Instruction and Training (INVALSI). The aim of the scale is to explore the anxiety levels of Italian students…

This edition of the Brown Center Report marks the tenth issue of the series and the final issue of Volume II. The publication began in 2000 with Bill Clinton in the White House and the Bush-Gore presidential campaign building toward its dramatic conclusion. That first report was organized in a three-part structure that all subsequent Brown Center…

Many students in Grades 9-10 are not meeting state standards on standardized mathematics tests in the Southeastern United States. The focus of this study was to determine if a teacher's confidence level affects student success in mathematics and to discover which type of teacher self-efficacy best predicts student performance. Bandura's social…

Mathematics is an increasingly important aspect of education because of its central role in technology (Kuenzi, 2008). Mathematical achievement tests are universally applied throughout schooling in the US to assess yearly progress. The middle school years (e.g., Grade 6-Grade 8) are especially crucial to success in mathematics because students…

Using an innovative recruitment tool, the social network site Facebook, survey data were gathered from samples of the Australian general public and from around the world. Views on the gendering of mathematics, science, and ICT were gathered. In this paper we report the findings from six of the 15 questions on the survey, and only from respondents…

The performance of a school system can be evaluated through the learning levels of the pupils, usually summarized by school mean scores. The variability of the mean scores among schools is rarely studied in detail, though it is a crucial issue especially in primary schools: in fact, a high variability among schools raises doubts on the capacity of…

It has long been suggested that, in a bilingual setting, the proficiencies achieved in the first (L1) and second (L2) language may have a bearing on a subject's cognitive and, consequently, academic functioning. The study is set in Malta, a country in which Maltese (L1) and English (L2) are learnt simultaneously at school from age 5. It…

In its mathematics standards, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) states that problem solving is an integral part of all mathematics learning and exposure to problem solving strategies should be embedded across the curriculum. Furthermore, by high school, students should be able to use, decide and invent a wide range of strategies.…

The algebra-based introductory statistics course is the most popular undergraduate course in statistics. While there is a general consensus for the content of the curriculum, the recent Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) have challenged the pedagogy of this course. Additionally, some arguments have been made…