The Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT) was a three-year study testing the hypothesis that rewarding teachers for improved student scores on standardized tests would cause scores to rise. Results, as described in Springer et al. (2010b), did not confirm this hypothesis. In this article we provide additional information on the POINT study…

Recent findings of passageless comprehension by college readers have added to the fallout with standardized reading comprehension tests and have called for theoretically and psychometrically stronger options. Reviewing the research literature, this paper suggests the maze test as an option for college reading assessment. The existing evidence,…

Standardized external testing (SET) began to be implemented in Ukraine in 2008 as an instrument for combating corruption in higher education and ensuring fair university admission. This article examines the conditions and processes that led to the introduction of SET, overviews its implementation over three years (2008-10), analyzes SET and…

Previous research has demonstrated that cognitive test validities are generalizable and predictive of academic performance across situations. However, even after accounting for statistical artifacts (e.g., sampling error, range restriction, criterion reliability), substantial variability often remains around estimates of cognitive test-performance…

This article presents the author's response to critiques of his essay titled "Individuality, Equality, and Creative Democracy--the Task Before Us." In his essay, the author has started sculpting short polemical pieces that purposefully overstate his case as a way of disrupting dominant educational discourses rather than arguing against…

The Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT) was a three-year study testing the hypothesis that rewarding teachers for improved student scores on standardized tests would cause scores to rise. Results, as described in Springer et al. (2010b), did not confirm this hypothesis. In this article we provide additional information on the POINT study…

This Methodological Brief introduces the reader to the regression discontinuity design (RDD), which is a method that when used correctly can yield estimates of research treatment effects that are equivalent to those obtained through randomized control trials and can therefore be used to infer causality. However, RDD does not require the random…

Psychopathology prior to the last four decades was generally viewed as a set of problems and disorders that did not occur in persons with intellectual disabilities (ID). That notion now seems very antiquated. In no small part, a revolutionary development of scales worldwide has occurred for the assessment of emotional problems in persons with ID.…

As challenges are handed down from state and federal governments to demonstrate utility and efficiency within teacher education programs, it is important to stop and consider the role of teacher education within schooling. Perhaps we should prepare new teachers by asking, "How should we prepare new teachers?" By framing teacher education…

The purpose of this study was to examine how 52 pre-service teachers (PSTs) assessed 7th-grade students' learning of social studies lessons they planned and taught. The PSTs provided assessment artifacts on 312 students, along with explanations for how they assessed and graded each student. Of the 429 coded assessment explanations, 240 (56%)…

This paper offers an account of what early mathematics education could look like in an age of young digital natives. Each "Tubby," as the tablets are called, presents Nicole (our generic little child) with stimulating mathematics microworlds, from which, beginning at age 3, she can learn basic math concepts, as well as methods of…

This paper examines student and school influences on reaching Year 12, the final year of schooling in Victoria, Australia. It analyses data from the population of students who were in Year 9 in 2008. Male, English-speaking background, government school, and especially Indigenous students were less likely to reach Year 12 than comparison groups.…

Three groups of undergraduates (42 senior graduating psychology majors, 27 first-year premajors taking introductory psychology, and 24 first-year, high-performing nonmajors taking introductory psychology) completed the Psychology Major Field Test (MFT) and a short-answer (SA) essay test on reasoning about core knowledge in psychology. Graduating…

This paper explores how the strong policy push to improve students' results on national literacy and numeracy tests -- the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) -- in the Australian state of Queensland influenced schooling practices, including teachers' learning. The paper argues the focus upon improved test scores on NAPLAN…

As educational needs of students change in response to changing demographics, economic factors, workforce needs, and school accountability requirements, school leaders must continually monitor and adjust curricula and associated methods of instructional delivery to increase student learning. The analysis of student performance data is a critical…