The purpose of this quantitative correlational research was to study the relationship between class size and students' academic achievement. Citywide language arts and math test scores for third and fifth grade students in four New York City public schools were examined using a variety of variables including (a) gender, (b) ethnicity, (c) grade…

High-stakes assessments have encouraged educators to ignore the needs of the top performers. Therefore, the Oakwood School District decided to implement a mathematics pilot enrichment program in order to meet the needs of the advanced mathematics students. As a result, this study used quantitative data to determine if there was a significant…

In order to "offer a first class educational experience and become the system of choice for all families the school system," challenged individual schools within the district to select and implement innovative educational theme based programs, coupled with the framework of Georgia Performance Standards (GPS), to increase the quality of…

Previous research has emphasized the importance of language for learning mathematics. This is especially true when mathematical problems have to be extracted from a meaningful context, as in arithmetic word problems. Bilingual learners with a low command of the instructional language thus may face challenges when dealing with mathematical…

Students who are deaf or hard of hearing are a low-incidence population with diverse linguistic characteristics and levels of academic achievement. This article presents findings on teacher recommendations of assessment practices for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. A total of 372 educational professionals responded to a set of three…

Most U.S. states have developed sophisticated assessment programs to evaluate student achievement and hold schools, teachers, and students accountable for learning important content. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2002) has placed further pressure on educators and administrators to ensure that all students are learning. Yet, some…

Parents, students, teachers, school leaders, governments and the general public need good information on how well their education systems prepare students for life. A growing commitment by governments to monitor the outcomes of education systems in terms of student achievement on a regular basis and within an internationally agreed framework led…

To ensure fairness, it is important to better understand the relationship of language proficiency to standard psychometric analysis procedures. This paper examines how results of differential item functioning (DIF) analysis are affected by an increase in the proportion of examinees who report that English is not their first language in the…

This study examined math achievement of elementary school students when Math Out of the Box (MTB), an inquiry-based math program, was used to supplement curriculum. The sample consisted of 767 New Jersey students in the third, fourth, and fifth grades, with approximately one third using MTB. Math achievement was measured by an assessment…

Accommodations have been widely utilized as a way of increasing the validity of content assessments for ELL students. However, concerns have also arisen regarding the validity of accommodation use, as well as accessibility and fairness. While many states have developed ELL-specific accommodation policies and guidelines, little research has been…

Three mental rotation tasks, the Card Rotation Task (CRT), the Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test (VMRT), and the Money Road-Map of Direction Sense (MRM), were administered to 60 deaf students from Gallaudet University to determine if mental rotation was predictive of scores on the ACT English or Math subtests. Other predictor variables, such as…

The report examines whether increasing competition from charter schools has a causal effect on the achievement of public school students in New York City, using a three-year longitudinal database of student test scores. As a measure of competition, it considers the percentage of students who left a public school for a charter school in the prior…

Objective: This study examines the potential role of candidate genes in moderating treatment effects of methylphenidate (MPH) in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Method: Eighty-two subjects with ADHD aged 6 to 17 years participated in a prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multiple-dose, crossover titration trial of…

Comparisons of human characteristics across different language groups and cultures become more important in today's educational assessment practices as evidenced by the increasing interest in international comparative studies. Within this context, the fairness of the results across different language and cultural groups draws the attention of…

This study examined the relationship between the implementation of No Child Left Behind and the achievement gap between African American and white students' eighth-grade math scores on the yearly-standardized test (Criterion Referenced Competency Test--CRCT) in Georgia. A descriptive research design was utilized to examine data obtained from the…