This edition of the Brown Center Report on American Education marks the first issue of volume three--and eleventh issue over all. The first installment was published in 2000, just as the Presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Al Gore were winding down. Education was an important issue in that campaign. It has not been thus far in the current…

As we work and study in our increasingly globalized society, there is a growing trend of Chinese piano students choosing to pursue their higher education in the United States. Elite music institutions in America are also seeking and recruiting a large number of Chinese pianists. This trend raises questions regarding the similarities and…

Computational thinking is a core skill in computer science that has become a focus of instruction in primary and secondary education worldwide. Since 2010, researchers have leveraged Evidence-Centered Design (ECD) methods to develop measures of students' Computational Thinking (CT) practices. This article describes how ECD was used to develop CT…

In this study, we analyzed and compared reasoning and proving opportunities in geometry lessons from American standard-based textbooks and Korean textbooks to understand how these textbooks provide student opportunities to engage in reasoning and proving activities. Overall, around 40% of exercise problems in Core Plus Mathematics Project (CPMP)…

There are many promising psychological interventions on the horizon, but there is no clear methodology for preparing them to be scaled up. Drawing on design thinking, the present research formalizes a methodology for redesigning and tailoring initial interventions. We test the methodology using the case of fixed versus growth mindsets during the…

In this paper, we investigate the impact of membership in the Bologna Process on patterns and driving forces of cross-national student mobility. Student exchange flows are analyzed for almost all Bologna Process member states and non-Bologna OECD members over a ten-year period (from 2000 to 2010). We apply a social network approach focusing on…

Standards drive critical elements of the American educational system--the curricula that schools follow, the textbooks students read, and the tests they take. Similarly, standards establish the levels of performance that students, teachers and schools are expected to meet. To succeed in the 21st century, all students will need to perform to high…

This report is the ACT annual report on the progress of U.S. high school graduates relative to college readiness. This year's report shows that 59% of students in the 2015 U.S. graduating class took the ACT® test, up from 57% last year and 49% in 2011. The increased number of test takers over the past several years enhances the breadth and depth…

With the failure of the No Child Left Behind policies of the 1990's, educational reformers wished to establish a "new and improved" set of standards for the United States to follow. However, since their inception in 2006-2007, the new Common Core State Standards have become increasingly unpopular due to the fact that they remain largely…

The best way to help disadvantaged and minority children overcome educational injustice is to impart to them, and all students, a universally shared core of knowledge. Unless this is done, many disadvantaged and minority students will continue to lag behind their peers in academic achievement. Research has shown that systems that achieve…

Examination of measurement invariance provides a powerful method to evaluate the hypothesis that the same set of psychological constructs underlies a set of test scores in different populations. If measurement invariance is observed, then the same psychological meaning can be ascribed to scores in both populations. In this study, the measurement…

The Praxis Series, developed by Educational Testing Services (ETS), has been the long standing assessment for teacher licensure. It is comprised of three separate skills examinations: (1) Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators (Core) (attempts to measure academic skills in reading, writing, and mathematics; content knowledge of candidates…

This study investigates the potential of a digital game that overlays popular game-play mechanics with formal physics representations and terminology to support explicit learning and exploration of Newtonian mechanics. The analysis compares test data, survey data, and observational data collected during implementations in Taiwan and the United…

Steroid use in professional sports continues to receive much media attention in the United States. The predominant response to the use of steroids in professional sports is negative. Much of the opposition to steroid use focuses on the critical importance of fair play in American society. To the degree that steroids provide some players with an…

This report provides information about the performance of 2012 graduating seniors who took the ACT as sophomores, juniors, or seniors; and self-reported at the time of testing that they were scheduled to graduate in 2012 and tested under standard time conditions. This report focuses on: (1) Performance: student test performance in the context of…