Setting international benchmarks for education systems of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries is one of the goals of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). However, some countries are not able to participate in PISA, despite their desire to set international benchmarks for their…

This report describes statistical indicators developed by the Council of the Great City Schools and its member districts to measure big-city school performance on a range of operational functions in business, finance, human resources and technology. The report also presents data city-by-city on those indicators. This is the second time that…

There is a lack of research that examines and compares the perspectives of students and their parents and teachers with respect to cyberbullying. Qualitative data were drawn from a mixed methods study on cyberbullying among students in grades 4, 7, and 10, in a large urban school board. Interviews with 13 students and their parents and teachers…

This mixed-methods benchmark study examined Saudi Arabian (SA) Eastern Province secondary students' understandings of the nature of science (NOS) in the Islamic context. To that end, two instruments, the Scientific Epistemological Views (SEVs) and an open-ended questionnaire about science and scientists were employed. Convenience sampling yielded…

We investigated the impacts of a peer-facilitated instructional intervention in mathematics on progress towards readiness for college among 10th graders who facilitated instruction for 9th graders in algebra classrooms in urban secondary schools. A goal of the intervention is to promote readiness for college by placing middle-performing students…

On the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments, the attainment of performance level 4 is intended to indicate college readiness or being "on track" to college and career readiness. Students who achieve Level 4 should have a 0.75 probability of attaining at least a C in entry-level,…

Our nation is in the midst of one of the largest education reforms in decades centered on the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and aligned assessments. In an era of rising accountability measures and declining literacy proficiency, it is vital to ensure that educational resources, such as benchmark assessments, are appropriately…

This research examined the extent to which benchmark assessments can be accurate forecasters of student performance on a state assessment in Algebra 1. The study applied correlational analysis, regression analysis, and receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis to the benchmark and state assessment results of a rural school district in…

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. One important tool is the concordance table between MAP and state summative assessments. Concordance tables have been used for decades to relate scores on…

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. One important tool is the concordance table between MAP and state summative assessments. Concordance tables have been used for decades to relate scores on…

When evaluators plan site-randomized experiments, they must conduct the appropriate statistical power analyses. These analyses are most likely to be valid when they are based on data from the jurisdictions in which the studies are to be conducted. In this method note, we provide software code, in the form of a SAS macro, for producing statistical…

The United States is in the midst of an effort to intensify middle school mathematics curricula by enrolling more 8th graders in Algebra. California is at the forefront of this effort, and in 2008, the state moved to make Algebra the accountability benchmark test for 8th-grade mathematics. This article takes advantage of this unevenly implemented…

In response to staff concerns about literacy and numeracy standards of commencing students, the School of Health Sciences at the University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) Fremantle campus worked with academic support staff from the University's Academic Enabling and Support Centre (AESC) to develop a Post Entrance Numeracy Assessment (PENA). The…

Since 1959, ACT has collected and reported data on students' academic readiness for college. As a trusted, nonprofit leader in research on college and career readiness, ACT is committed to continuing efforts to provide data and information to help solve the daunting problems faced by our nation. This report is part of a series of reports that…

This report presents a methodology for the creation of a PSAT/NMSQT test score benchmark to identify students who are on track toward college readiness when completing high school. The proposed benchmark could create useful early indicators of whether students in grades 10 and 11 are on track to be college ready upon high school graduation. Two…