The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether and, if so, how formal teacher competence relates to the relationship between pupil reading achievement and teachers judgements' of pupils' reading achievement. The data come from the Swedish participation in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2001 in…

The current study examines the impact of alternative education on children's early school engagement in terms of school enjoyment and independent participation. A sample of 2,776 children from traditional (e.g., mainstream) and alternative (Freinet and Waldorf) Flemish schools was followed from their 3rd year of kindergarten until 3rd grade. The…

Statisticians have shown the theoretical extent of parameter distortion when the classroom level is ignored in multilevel analyses of schooling. This article illustrates the practical consequences of omitting the classroom for inferences drawn about the extent and mechanisms of schooling effects, using the relationship between reading achievement,…

The purpose of this investigation is to determine the incidence of school infrastructure and resources and its impact on the academic performance of primary education students in Latin America. A 4-level multilevel model was applied to the data of the Second Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (SERCE) conducted by UNESCO, which researched…

This study aimed to identify the classroom and school characteristics that are associated with student achievement in mathematics and Serbian language in primary schools in Serbia. The study sample consisted of 119 public primary schools, 253 classrooms, and 4,857 third-grade students. Variables from 3 past research paradigms--input-output,…

This paper investigates whether inferences about school performance based on longitudinal models are consistent when different assessments and metrics are used as the basis for analysis. Using norm-referenced (NRT) and standards-based (SBT) assessment results from panel data of a large heterogeneous school district, we examine inferences based on…

This article addresses the evaluation of the Mathematics Improvement Programme. The results show that the programme improved the learning results of pupils in grade 3 with half a standard deviation and reduced the percentage of struggling pupils to less than 1%. Fifteen percent of the variance in pupil results is to be explained at the school…