Grades in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses are distributed under the assumption that high-performing students have a strong understanding of the material. Similarly, the STEM education literature often presents exam performance as equivalent to understanding. Despite these assumptions, we have little…

Psychological well-being which is an important concept for individual mental health involves maintaining meaningful aims in life, developing quality relationships with others and struggling with life to ensure personal development. Based on the importance of the concept of psychological well-being, in this study, it is aimed to determine the…

Little is known about the across time stability of autistic traits during the transition period from preschool to school age in the general population. The current study compared autistic traits assessed by a mother-reported quantitative measure, the Social Responsiveness Scale, at age 5 and 8 years and examined the intraclass correlation…

Peer-grading is commonly adopted by instructors as an effective assessment method for MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and SPOCs (Small Private online course). For solving the problems brought by varied skill levels and attitudes of online students, statistical models have been proposed to improve the fairness and accuracy of peer-grading.…

Adjunct faculty are an increasingly important employee group in higher education, especially at community colleges. Community colleges rely on these faculty to teach more than 75% of the courses offered each semester. Contrary to their necessity in community colleges is their treatment at those institutions, often being referred to as…

When applicants take the ACT® more than once, how do colleges and universities reconcile and make sense of the multiple scores? In terms of validity, fairness, and impact on subgroup differences, are certain score-use polices better than others? The focus of this issue brief is to summarize evidence on the validity and fairness of various…

There is an ongoing debate among instructional personnel, parents, legislators, and the community at large about the nature and purpose of testing in the educational system. State and district-based testing programs have been criticized as "over-testing" policies. The result of the criticism culminates in a reduction of assessment…

Over the past 20 years, elite colleges in the US have seen dramatic increases in applications. We provide context for part of this trend using detailed data on Harvard University that was unsealed as part of the SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit. We show that Harvard encourages applications from many students who effectively have no chance of being…

Career and Technical Education (CTE) is hot topic and trend in education; in part because of the increased demand from Americans to include CTE programs and opportunities in schools along with increased federal funding to build new CTE programs and improve existing ones. Today's schools are faced with pressure to improve the student achievement.…

Using simulated data, this study examined the impact of different levels of stringency of the valid case inclusion criterion on item response theory (IRT)-based true score equating over 5 years in the context of K-12 assessment when growth in student achievement is expected. Findings indicate that the use of the most stringent inclusion criterion…

Students must choose when to take the ACT for the first time and if and when to retest. States and districts that administer the ACT test to all students must also choose when to administer the test. A key consideration in making these decisions is the impact on scores. Because the ACT is a curriculum-based test of academic achievement, students…

Course Evaluation Instruments (CEIs) are critical aspects of faculty assessment and evaluation across most higher education institutions, but heated debates surround the value and validity of such instruments. While some argue that CEI scores are valid measures of course and instructor quality, others argue that faculty members can game the…

Elicited Imitation Tests (EITs) are commonly used in second language acquisition (SLA)/bilingualism research contexts to assess the general oral proficiency of study participants. While previous studies have provided valuable EIT construct-related validity evidence, some key gaps remain. This study uses an integrative data analysis to further…

Background: Breakfast after the bell (BAB), an alternative way to deliver breakfast after the school day begins, has been shown to increase participation in the School Breakfast Program. However, BAB occupies time that could otherwise be used for instruction and may affect academic performance. This study examined whether BAB affects math and…

This paper presents results of a score interpretation study for a computer adaptive mathematics assessment. The study purpose was to test the efficacy of item developers' alignment of items to Range Achievement-Level Descriptors (RALDs; Egan et al.) against the empirical achievement-level alignment of items to investigate the use of RALDs as the…