A goal in many countries is to institute state-wide exams to base student assessment more firmly on norms for all classes. This raises the question as to the extent to which greater standardization of grading practice can be reached by implementing state-wide exit exams. Since there is a lack of longitudinal studies, we analyzed the effect of the…

This study uses a school-level longitudinal control-group design to examine how teachers and principals of inspected versus uninspected schools perceive school improvement at their schools. During the phasing in of school inspections in the states of Berlin and Brandenburg (Germany), both inspected and uninspected schools were surveyed with…

In evaluating the deleterious effects of missing in-school time, research has almost exclusively focused on absences, and almost no attention has been paid to tardiness. Hence, this study contributes a new dimension to the field by examining the effects of student tardiness on academic achievement. Employing an empirical model on a large-scale,…

This paper aims to investigate how stability varies with the approach used in estimating school performance in a large sample of English primary schools. The results show that (a) raw performance is considerably more stable than adjusted performance, which in turn is slightly more stable than growth model estimates; (b) schools' performance…

The present study investigates the effects of teachers (background qualifications, attitudes and beliefs, and instructional practices) on student achievement in mathematics, reading, and spelling in 1st grade. Its theoretical framework and methodology are based on recent work by Palardy and Rumberger (2008). Data from the SiBO Project, a…

This article focuses on the use of a value-added approach for promoting school improvement. It presents yearly value-added estimates, analyses their stability over time, and discusses the contribution of this methodological approach for promoting school improvement programmes in the Portuguese system of evaluation. The value-added model is applied…

In this paper, we report on 2 studies developing, testing, and using an observation tool for measuring primary literacy instruction, the Developing Language and Literacy Teaching (DLLT) rubrics. In Study 1 (an instrumentation study), we show that the DLLT has a high level of internal consistency, that there are high levels of inter-rater…

Using data from the U.S. Department of Education's (2000) "Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99" (ECLS-K), this study investigates the relationship between school efforts to engage parents, average socioeconomic status (SES) of families within a school, and kindergarteners' end-of-year reading and…

In educational effectiveness research, it frequently has proven difficult to make credible inferences about cause and effect relations. The article first identifies the main categories of threats to valid causal inference from observational data, and discusses designs and analytic approaches which protect against them. With the use of data from 22…

This paper illustrates how high-quality preschool has the potential to serve as an intervention within normal populations. Although it is well known that targeted Early Interventions can protect the development of young children from developmental risks, there remains less evidence concerning universal preschool education. To address this…

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…

The Effective Pre-school Provision in Northern Ireland (EPPNI) project is a longitudinal study of child development from 3 to 11 years. It is one of the first large-scale UK projects to investigate the effects of different kinds of preschool provision, and to relate experience in preschool to child development. In EPPNI, 683 children were randomly…

Few studies have investigated how preschool and primary school interact to influence children's cognitive development. The present investigation explores German children's numeracy skills between age 3 (1st year of preschool) and age 7 (1st year of primary school). We first identified the influence of preschool experience on development while…

In this study, longitudinal cohort-sequential latent growth modeling was used to determine the effects of (a) socioeconomically mixed preschool and kindergarten classrooms, (b) the implementation of an education program aiming to accelerate socioeconomically disadvantaged children's emergent academic skills, and (c) the amount of teacher-managed…

In 2004, the pattern in academic pathways for high school students in the USA showed that students were completing more demanding mathematics courses. Despite the upward pattern in advanced-level mathematics course-taking, disparities among racial/ethnic groups persisted between 1982 and 2004. Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of…