The challenge of "educational" assessments--assessments that advance the purposes of learning and instruction--is to provide useful information regarding students' progress towards the goals of instruction in ways that are reliable and not idiosyncratic. In this commentary, the author indicates that the challenges are actually more…

As schools gear up for the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), what is the point and purpose of this new performance measure and the curriculum it encompasses? In this article the author takes a critical look at the EBacc, its assumptions about the aims of education, the curriculum model on which it is based and the implications for how schools are to…

Background: Executive function (EF) plays a critical role in academic outcomes in typically developing children, but the contribution of EF to academic performance in Down syndrome (DS) is less well understood. This study evaluated differences in early academic foundations between primary school aged children with DS and non-verbal mental-age…

This paper empirically documents media portrayals of Australia's performance on the Program for the International Student Assessment (PISA), 2000-2014. We analyse newspaper articles from two national and eight metropolitan newspapers. This analysis demonstrates increased media coverage of PISA over the period in question. Our research data were…

The purpose of this study was to understand and compare the types of errors students with a specific learning disability in reading and/or writing (SLD-R/W) and those with a specific learning disability in math (SLD-M) made in the areas of reading, writing, language, and mathematics. Clinical samples were selected from the norming population of…

The articles presented in this Special Issue provide evidence for many statistically significant relationships among error scores obtained from the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, Third Edition (KTEA)-3 between various groups of students with and without disabilities. The data reinforce the importance of examiners looking beyond the…

Florida, from 1971 to 2014 has used the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) as a yearly accountability tool throughout the education system in the state (Bureau of K-12 Assessment, 2005). Schools use their own assessments to determine if students are making progress throughout the year. In one school district within Florida, Performance…

This qualitative embedded case study documents the policy implementation of literacy assessment in a Texas urban high school, using Foucault's theory of the panopticon to understand how teaching and learning were shaped by the state high-stakes exit exam. In addition to the strong influence of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness…

Different approaches are employed when teaching environmental issues. One approach, termed the "environmental scientific approach," perceives environmental education as part of life or earth sciences, providing factual, scientific knowledge. Another approach, termed the "environmental sustainability citizenry approach",…

The development of the modern nation-state was an inherently centralising process. Education policy and the institutionalisation of mass public schooling played a key role in this process, facilitating industrialisation and the generation of mass loyalty toward the state. In almost all federal systems, however, education policy remained an…

In this paper, we report results from a multisite, student-level randomized controlled trial that examined the impact of the Building Assets, Reducing Risks (BARR) model on ninth-grade students. The BARR model is a comprehensive, strength-based approach that uses eight interlocking strategies to build intentional staff-to-staff, staff-to-student,…

For many countries, inequitable access to rigorous content and instruction at the early grades leads to the low academic performance for students with fewer resources at home. One way to assess these inequities, and identify possible mediators, is to consider the role of instructional leadership as a means for schools to set educational goals for…

This paper reflects on UK mathematics education following the poor performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) metric, which compares reading, science, and mathematics across 27 countries. We compared a range of features within secondary school mathematics in the UK with the countries outperforming the UK. We note…

We investigated the contributions of multiple strands of factors--individual characteristics (struggling reader status, working memory, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, knowledge-based inference, theory of mind, comprehension monitoring), a text feature (narrative vs. expository genre), and question types (literal and inferential)--to one's…

Reading skill is important to improve children's higher-order thinking skills. But PISA reading results show that children in Turkey are not sufficient for this skill. That's why this study aimed to investigate the cognitive levels of reading outcomes included in the Turkish course curriculum in terms of The Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes…