Struggling students' poor reading and comprehension skills have continued to be a national problem. A New Jersey Department of Education report showed that of 311,628 middle school students tested in language arts, 26.2% scored at the partial proficiency level and 58.5% scored at the proficiency level. Further review of the middle schools in a…

Assessment is a critical component of teaching and learning but many educators, parents, and students have expressed concerns about the amount of assessment occurring in schools across the country. Standardized assessments have received a great deal of publicity as the culprit of over-testing. However, standardized assessments are only part of a…

With adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in a majority of U.S. states came the rapid development of new high-stakes exams. Though researchers have investigated CCSS and related policy initiatives, less attention has been directed toward understanding how the standards have been translated into testing programs. Due to the strong…

The nature of federal and state policies regarding accountability testing narrows the taught curriculum to content tested, thereby changing what is officially valued as student learning. The over-emphasis on standardized test scores has narrowed the curriculum to content that is tested (Amrein&Berliner, 2002; Baker, 2008; Herman, 2008;…

The authors describe five value-added methods (VAM) used in school assessment as the backdrop to their main thesis. Then they review the assumptions underlying measurement and evaluation, the foundation of all assessment systems, including value-added. They discuss the traditional criterion variable used in VAM: a standardized test score. Next,…

The aim of this study was to examine the association of breastfeeding practices with the growth trajectories of children's cognitive development. We used data from the Child Development Supplement (CDS) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) with variables on presence and duration of breastfeeding and standardized test scores obtained…

This study provides empirical evidence on preservice teachers' (PSTs) dispositions by surveying them on topics of educational policy in their first required course for a teacher preparation program in one mid-sized public university. Our survey used the same questions as did the Ed Next/Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance poll,…

Input is considered one of the most important factors in the acquisition of lexical and grammatical skills. Input has been found to interact with other factors, such as learner cognitive skills and the circumstances where language is heard. Language learning itself has sometimes been found to enhance cognitive skills. Indeed, intensive contact…

Since March 2020, COVID-19 has required the implementation of remote learning options in K-12 public schools across North Carolina, ranging from fully online classroom experiences to hybrid scenarios in which students attend school both in person and remotely. In some locales, students continue to attend school in person most of the time, but with…

This analytical report seeks to address the evident gap in the formative assessment of social and emotional education by providing a framework indicating how social and emotional education may be assessed through a whole-school approach, both at individual (learner) and contextual (classroom climate and whole school system) levels, accompanied by…

For the past several decades, issues such as underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority students in gifted programming, as well as the widening of the existing achievement gap between specific minority and majority groups have persisted. The majority of gifted education researchers studying underrepresentation in gifted programming focus on…

Faced with a pressing demand for eldercare workers, Japan signed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) to recruit workers from Southeast Asian countries. The EPA limits the employment period for migrant workers, unless they successfully pass the healthcare licensure examination in Japanese. Therefore, they receive on-the-job training and prepare…

Papay (2011) noticed that teacher value-added measures (VAMs) from a statistical model using the most common pre/post testing timeframe--current-year spring relative to previous spring (SS)--are essentially unrelated to those same teachers' VAMs when instead using next-fall relative to current-fall (FF). This is concerning since this choice--made…

Inclusive educational practices are rooted in a body of research indicating that when students in need of support through special education are meaningfully included in schools, academic and social outcomes improve for all students. To realize this promise of better outcomes, traditional schools with separate classrooms and even schools designated…

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) is committed to the cognitive, linguistic, and socio-emotional development of all children in Illinois. ISBE's Multilingual Department is focused on ensuring that students with diverse linguistic repertoires and those who may benefit from additional support have equitable access to academic instruction…