The aim of this study is to describe and to explore the main factors affecting the performance of South African pupils in the mathematics test of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study-Repeat (TIMSS-R). The first objective was to describe the performance of the pupils in the mathematics test, the pupils' proficiency in English, as…

"Education Week" provides a weekly review of state and federal K-12 education policy news. This special issue of "Education Week" includes the following articles: (1) Below the Surface; (2) School Leaders Seek Innovative Solutions to Improve Student Performance (Steven Dowling); (3) A Decade of Effort (Lynn Olson); (4) A Small Wonder (Debra…

State policies to equalize educational spending, cap bond and levy rates, require common teacher salary schedules, and consolidate school districts are geared toward improving quality and attempting to resolve problems of inefficiency. However, despite the use of state policy to equalize educational quality, educational gaps persist. Yu and Lau…

In this technical report, we describe the development and piloting of a series of mathematics progress monitoring measures intended for use with students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade. These measures, available as part of easyCBM[TM], an online progress monitoring assessment system, were developed in 2007 and 2008 and administered to…

Created by teachers for teachers, the Math Academy tools and activities included in this booklet were designed to create hands-on activities and a fun learning environment for the teaching of mathematics to the students. This booklet contains the "Math Academy--Let's Go to the Mall! Explorations in Combinatorics," which teachers can use to enhance…

Item response theory (IRT) has been used extensively to study differential item functioning (dif) and to identify potentially biased items. The use of IRT for diagnostic purposes is less prevalent and has received comparatively less attention. This study addressed differential objective function (dof) to identify potentially biased content units.…

This booklet contains the practice tests for the Sixth-grade Ohio Proficiency Tests. Student work on these practice tests helps the teacher evaluate how well the student understands the subjects of writing, reading, mathematics, citizenship, and science. The writing test consists of two writing tasks based on one stimulus passage, and the reading,…

The original National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has been criticized for its limited ability to provide information that is useful at a variety of levels. As a result, Congress authorized a voluntary NAEP Trial State Assessment Program for the assessment of mathematics at grade 8 in 1990, reading at grade 4 in 1992, and mathematics…

To determine whether the range of ability within the classroom has a significant effect on students' performance in mathematics, and to identify the class compositional or instructional characteristics that contribute to differences between homogeneous and heterogeneous classes in terms of mathematics achievement, an analysis was conducted using…

A new testing strategy that provides protection against the problem of having examinees in adaptive testing choose difficulty levels that are not matched to their proficiency levels was introduced and evaluated. The method, termed restricted self-adapted testing (RSAT), still provides examinees with a degree of control over the difficulty levels…

This study assessed whether providing examinees with a choice between computerized adaptive testing (CAT) and self-adaptive testing (SAT) affects test performance in comparison with being assigned a CAT or SAT, and evaluated variables influencing examinee choice of either test form. The relative influences of test type and test choice on examinee…

Data from the Spring 1996 administration of the New Standards Mathematics Reference Examination for Middle Grades were used to examine the instructional validity of the Reference Examination, opportunity to learn, and equity in the context of the California Mathematics Renaissance program. Student (n=1,936) and teacher (n=105) responses to the…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a congressionally mandated survey of educational achievement of what American students know and can do, it also includes a yardstick that can be used to evaluate that performance. Results, presented here for the states and the nation, indicate that just over 60 percent of the students in…

The validity of teachers' reports of students' instructional experiences (content exposure or coverage) and content validity of a given course were studied by examining the consistency of reported content coverage for teachers across two consecutive years (1988 and 1989). In addition, the sensitivity of the test to instruction was examined by…

The main purpose of this special issue is to suggest strategies for meeting the mathematical needs of two-year college students in the decade of the 1990s. Since the 20 contributors were free to write about topics that they considered to be appropriate to the intellectual and personal development of all students their papers represent a broad…