School Exit Research Articles

Assessing the range of cognitive processes in the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (HKDSE)’s English language reading literacy test

This study examines the range of cognitive processes assessed in the English language reading literacy test as part of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (HKDSE), the secondary school exit test in Hong Kong. Prior studies have suggested that higher order cognitive processes are often undermined in high-stakes tests and classrooms, due to what is called the “washback effect.” This prompts the following hypothesis: despite its top-performing education system, Hong Kong has failed to provide a versatile collection of test items that involve complex reasoning. To investigate the cognitive demands of the test, as well as their relationship with student performance, this study maps the test items with reference to the cognitive levels assessed using in-depth document analysis. ANOVA is used to statistically determine differences in accuracy rates to supplement the analysis throughout. Results indicate that the test has placed an overwhelming emphasis on lower order cognitive processes over the past decade (2012–2019) and that items assessing higher order cognitive skills are, as expected, met with statistically significantly poorer performance in the test. Implications for future revision of the test and curriculum policy are discussed.

Online learning

The use of online learning in teaching Technical Vocational in the Senior High during this pandemic is a challenge. This study examines the impact of online learning in the Senior High School exit assessment in the Technical Vocational specializations in Alejo M Pacalso Memorial National High School. The use of phenomenological approach and thematic analysis, face-to-face talks, online interviews and observations were applied to synthesize, identify and come out with the findings. Findings confirm that education using online learning significantly impacts the exit assessment of the technical vocational learners as respondents has issues in technical, technological, physical, environmental, personal and psychological difficulties while using the said platform. Further, the research reflects that the knowledge domain can be highly met using online learning using discussion, video and learning materials as strategies but psychomotor and affective domain does not. Although some acknowledge that online learning benefits them because its self-paced, respondents clamor to be more confident when they learn the competency skills using hands-on than in online platform. Strengthening parent-teacher-stakeholders in partnership with the Department of Education will guarantee innovations, interventions and continuity of online learning to ensure high exit assessment results of senior high school technical vocational learners.

Tight‐loose: Understanding variability, trade‐offs and felt accountability across the curriculum‐pedagogy‐assessment dynamic

AbstractVariability in education systems is a given. Variability has at once positive and negative implications for the main goal of education which is accelerating learning across diverse contexts and for all learners. In this article, we explain and employ a tight‐loose framing to understand the scope for variability within an education system. A tight‐loose framing directs attention to the interplay of prescription/accountability and autonomy. This framing is yet to be fully explored as a way of understanding and exploiting variability across the curriculum‐pedagogy‐assessment dynamic within a high‐stakes assessment context. High‐stake assessment has particular susceptibilities to variability because of its consequences for stakeholders and implications for accountability across the various levels of the education system. We illustrate the tight‐loose framing through a case study from New Zealand of a teacher and her class of Year 12 science learners who were working towards the national senior secondary school exit qualification. The teacher was trialling a new General Science course that emphasised inquiry. Observation and interview data were collected over the course of the school year. We analyse the contours of variability across levels of the national curriculum and assessment policy, school agendas, teacher pedagogy, and student decision‐making and experiences. Our findings show that teachers and students made trade‐offs according to felt accountabilities and priorities within the tightness and looseness of their education context, as they perceived and experienced it. Our proposition is that a multi‐level tight‐loose framing provides a new and different insight into how policies, philosophies and practices interact under high‐stakes conditions to affect outcomes for learners.

The Effect of School-Year Employment on Cognitive Skills, Risky Behavior, and Educational Achievement

We estimate the causal effect of hours of employment during the final year of compulsory school on cognitive skills, risky behavior, and educational achievement. The effect is identified by exploiting variation in hours of school-year employment between employed twins and estimation of a value-added model using administrative registers. Increasing hours of school-year employment increases grades in the school exit exams, reduces juvenile delinquency in the following year, and increases the years of schooling attained by age 20. If anything, increasing hours of school-year employment reduces school dropout and school absence. Our results are consistent with a non-linear effect of employment intensity on educational achievement and employment being preventive of risky behavior.

The Origins of American Test-Based Educational Accountability and Controversies About Its Impact, 1970–1983

Background and Context: Statewide test-based accountability in the United States began with minimum competency assessments in public schools during the 1970s, starting in Florida and other Southern states. Controversies over IQ (intelligence quotient) testing contributed to the development of “criterion-referenced” exams that became the principal form of assessment for such purposes. These developments provoked considerable discussion, much of it focused on the high failure rates on such tests, disproportionally borne by ethnic and racial minority students. Controversy over these events eventually led to a formal debate sponsored by the National Institute of Education (NIE), and a federal lawsuit that established the legality of such assessment regimes. Purpose: This article is a historical account of the rise of standardized testing for school accountability in the United States and the controversies that it entailed in the years before 1983. It highlights events in Florida, which set the tone for developments elsewhere with a high school exit exam. It also describes controversies within the measurement field about statewide tests as graduation requirements. In addition, it considers the response of policymakers to criticism of test-based accountability, setting the stage for developments leading to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era. Research Design: The research for this study was historical in orientation, employing a combination of primary (contemporaneous) and secondary (subsequent) documents, along with published research, to construct an interpretive account in narrative form. This process yielded an explanatory frame highlighting debates over the proper use and practical impact of standardized testing for accountability purposes. The results generally comported with other historical accounts of the period, even as they provided a considerably more detailed record of relevant events and principal actors. Conclusion: This historical account places the origins of test-based accountability a decade earlier than A Nation at Risk (1983), often considered its impetus. Florida became the first state to establish a comprehensive testing system for accountability, and other Southern states soon followed. This had a racially disparate impact on these states and others, depriving many thousands of African American and other students of high school diplomas. There is scant evidence that such tests appreciably raised achievement levels for all students, a widely proclaimed purpose of accountability regimes. Even so, test-based accountability remained a controversial cornerstone of educational reform proposals for decades to come, anticipating debates during the contentious NCLB years.

A Bridge to Graduation: Post-Secondary Effects of an Alternative Pathway for Students Who Fail High School Exit Exams

A Bridge to Graduation: Post-Secondary Effects of an Alternative Pathway for Students Who Fail High School Exit Exams

A Bridge to Graduation: Post-Secondary Effects of an Alternative Pathway for Students Who Fail High School Exit Exams

A Bridge to Graduation: Post-Secondary Effects of an Alternative Pathway for Students Who Fail High School Exit Exams

The role of parental advocacy in addressing service disparities for transition-aged youth on the autism spectrum.

It can be difficult for youth on the autism spectrum to get the services they need after they leave high school. Because of this, many studies have examined the different factors that are related to service access. These studies have shown that youth on the autism spectrum who belong to an underrepresented racial or ethnic group or whose families have lower incomes are less likely to receive the services that they need. However, it is difficult or impossible to change things like race/ethnicity or family income. It is important to also identify factors that might improve service access that we can change. One potential factor that fits into this category is parental advocacy activities. Using data collected from 185 parents of youth on the autism spectrum, we found that more parental advocacy activities were related to youth receiving more services, even after accounting for variables related to the functioning of the youth (e.g. whether they have an intellectual disability, their autism symptom severity) and demographic information about the family (e.g. state in which they live, parental race/ethnicity, and family income). Our findings suggest that building parental advocacy skills may be one important way to increase the number of services that youth on the autism spectrum receive as they transition to adulthood.

Hong Kong secondary students’ perspectives on selecting test difficulty level and learner washback: Effects of a graded approach to assessment

This sequential mixed-methods study investigates washback on learning in a high-stakes school exit examination by examining learner perceptions and reported behaviours in relation to learners’ beliefs and language learning experience, the role of other stakeholders in the washback mechanism, and socio-educational forces. The focus is the graded approach of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education English Language Examination (HKDSE-English), incorporated in 2012, that allows test-takers to choose between easier and more difficult sections for reading and listening-integrated skills papers. Inductive coding of focus groups involving 12 secondary students fed into the development of the Washback on Students’ Learning questionnaire, which was administered to another 150 learners. Exploratory factor analyses of identified washback effects revealed four major types straddling different settings (classrooms, tutorial schools, learners’ personal environment), and seven categories of mediating variables pertaining to learners themselves, other stakeholders, and societal influences. Simultaneous multiple regressions identified influential clusters of mediating variables and showed the strongest predictors for each macro-level washback type varied. At least one intrinsic and one extrinsic factor category significantly contributed to all types, reaffirming learner washback as a socially situated, negotiated construct. Implications related to the consequences, use, and fairness of the graded approach are discussed.

Equality of opportunity and human capital accumulation: Motivational effect of a nationwide scholarship in Colombia

We study the ex ante motivational effect of a nationwide merit and need-based scholarship in Colombia, which granted full scholarships to low-income students at high-quality universities. Specifically, we analyze how the opportunity to receive the scholarship, influenced the performance of low-income students in the national high-school exit and 9th grade exams, and their university enrollment rates. Following a differences-in-discontinuity design, we find that the opportunity to receive the scholarship significantly increased test scores at the national high school exit exam at the top of the distribution. At the 90th percentile of the distribution, eligibility for the scholarship reduced the socioeconomic achievement gap by 16 percent. We also document an increase in the post-secondary enrollment of low-income students at the top of their score distribution, even for the non-recipients of the scholarship. Finally, we estimate a positive effect on the test scores of younger 9th grade students, affecting a broader range of the distribution. Our results highlight how opportunities for social mobility encourage human capital accumulation by low-income students, thus contributing to breaking the persistence of poverty and inequality.

Quantifying the Supply Response of Private Schools to Public Policies

School policies that cause a large demand shift between public and private schooling may cause some private schools to enter or exit the market. We study how the policy effects differ under a fixed versus changing market structure in the context of a public school funding reform in New York City. We find evidence of a reduction in private schools in response to the reform. Using a model of demand for and supply of private schooling, we estimate that 20 percent of the reform’s effect on school enrollments came from increased private school exit and reduced private school entry. (JEL H75, I21, I22, I28)

Association of type 1 diabetes and educational achievement in 16-20-year-olds: A Danish nationwide register study.

The objective of the study was to compare grade point averages (GPAs) on compulsory school exit exams (exam GPA) and educational attainment at age 16 and 20 for individuals with and without type 1 diabetes. This study was a population-based retrospective cohort study, which included the 1991 to 1998 birth cohorts in Denmark. Follow-up was conducted at age 16 and 20 (follow-up period; 1January, 2007 to 31 December, 2018). There were 2083 individuals with and 555,929 individuals without type 1 diabetes. Linear regression and generalized linear models compared outcomes with and without adjustments for socio-economic characteristics. A total of 558,012 individuals (51% males) were followed to the age of 20. Having type 1 diabetes was associated with a lower exam GPA when adjusting for socio-economic status (difference: -0.05 (95% CI, -0.09 to -0.01), a higher relative risk of not completing compulsory school by age 16 (1.37, 95% CI, 1.22 to 1.53)), and a higher relative risk of not completing or being enrolled in upper secondary education by age 20 (1.05, 95% CI, 1.00 to 1.10). Haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) <58mmol/mol (7.5%), >7 BGM/day and insulin pump use were associated with better educational achievement. Type 1 diabetes was associated with a marginally lower exam GPA and a higher risk of not completing compulsory school by age 16 and lower educational attainment by age 20. The findings were modified by HbA1c, BGM and insulin pump use.

If not now, when? The timing of childbirth and labor market outcomes

SummaryWe study the effect of childbirth and birth timing on female labor market outcomes in Italy. The impact is traced up to 21 years since school completion by estimating a factor analytic model with dynamic selection into treatments. We find that childbirth, especially the first delivery, negatively affects female earnings and participation. Women having their first child soon after school exit catch up with childless women after 12–15 years. The negative consequences are smaller if the first child is delayed up to 7–9 years after school completion or if a second childbirth occurs within 6 years since school exit.

Linking principal task effectiveness to student achievement in secondary schools in the Maldives

ABSTRACT Little is known about the relations between principals’ effectiveness in specific leadership tasks and student achievement. The purpose of this study is to explore principal task effectiveness, as perceived by principals themselves and their senior management teams (SMTs), and to explore the associations between perceived principal task effectiveness and student achievement. This study employed an exploratory quantitative design using surveys to collect principal and SMT ratings of principal task effectiveness. In addition, grades from secondary school exit examination in Mathematics and English as a Second Language (ESL) were collected from all public secondary schools in the Maldives. An exploratory factor analysis was used to explore principal task dimensions. Hierarchical regressions were used to examine the predictive ability of principal task effectiveness and certain principal characteristics on student achievement. The analysis revealed five leadership task dimensions: School Management, Instructional Management, Teacher Quality, External Relations, and Program Development and Evaluation. The Teacher Quality dimension positively predicted student achievement in ESL. This research highlights the importance of principal task effectiveness and its link to student achievement. The findings have implications for principals’ preparation and professional learning.

A New Theoretical and Methodological Look at Gender Differences in Mathematics Tests: Reasoning, Psychosocial Attitudes, and Multilevel Models

Acknowledging that gender, as a construct, is an expression of a power structure, observed differences favoring males were explained for two standardized tests of mathematical context: the Mathematics section of the University of Costa Rica’s Admission Test and the Mathematics test from the Secondary School’s Exit Exam. The sample was 487 students in the last year of high school in ten public schools from the Greater Metropolitan Area of Costa Rica; 269 were women. Multilevel regression models were estimated using the scores in these tests as dependent variables. The reduced model only included sex as a predictor, whereas the complete model included, additionally, an indicator of reasoning abilities and the following scales: hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, attitude toward gender equity in mathematics, and self-efficacy in mathematics. Results point out that gender differences are reduced by controlling for reasoning abilities. Benevolent sexism predicted performance in the tests to a lesser degree. There was also evidence of the moderating effect of the school for the relationship between sex and the score in the admission test, and, especially, for the means in the secondary school exit test. Mathematics self-efficacy also had considerable predictive power in the latter. These findings provide evidence of the need for teachers to actively promote self-efficacy in their students, especially women. The considerable differences in the average scores of the Secondary School’s Exit Exam, even though they are all public and from the Greater Metropolitan Area of Costa Rica, suggests the presence of inequities that should be studied more in-depth, including schools beyond this area, which could reveal even more disadvantages.

A comparative analysis of the linguistic complexity of Grade 12 English Home Language and English First Additional Language examination papers

It is expected that English Home Language (Eng HL), as a subject, is more complex than English First Additional Language (Eng FAL). This article aims to uncover the reality of this expectation by comparatively investigating the linguistic complexity of texts used for reading comprehension and summaries in the final school exit examinations. The Coh-Metrix online platform was used to analyse a combined total of 24 Grade 12 final examination texts for Eng HL and Eng FAL ranging from 2008 to 2019. Five main indices relating to the word level, sentence, readability, lexical diversity and referential cohesion linguistic complexity were explored. The findings illustrated that the linguistic complexities of the texts used for reading comprehension and summary writing in the two subjects differ significantly, with Eng HL being more linguistically complex than Eng FAL texts. Furthermore, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level measure indicates the Eng FAL texts as two grades below the overall grade for Eng HL texts. Nonetheless, the linguistic complexity measures used in this article confirm the expectation that texts used in Eng HL reading comprehension and summary writing are more complex than those used in Eng FAL.

An English academic reading course for Dutch pre-university students

Abstract In this research note we argue that reading lessons for the subject of English in Dutch pre-university education require adjustments. Currently, these lessons do not prepare students well for university reading. Too often, lessons emphasize searching for information, the dominant skill to pass the school exit exam. Instead, students would benefit much more from instruction on reading to learn and critical reading, which are important university skills. Moreover, the expository texts for English classes generally concern school subjects instead of genuine English content such as linguistics. To address these problems, we are in the process of developing an academic reading course focussing on linguistic topics to enhance students’ academic readiness, while at the same time adding depth and content to the subject of English in Dutch pre-university education. An empirical study to evaluate the effectiveness of this course will follow.

Post–High School Daily Living Skills in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Daily living skills (DLS) are a predictor of positive outcomes in youths with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet little is known about trajectories of DLS in adults with ASD. This study investigated the impact of high school exit on participants' trajectories of daily living skills age equivalent (DLS-AE) scores from ages 2 to 26 and the relationship between DLS-AE trajectories and employment and education outcomes. Participants were 98 adults with ASD drawn from an ongoing longitudinal study. The Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales were administered 8 times from ages 2 to 26. Employment and education data were compiled from parent report demographic forms. DLS-AE trajectories modestly increased with age before exiting school, at which point DLS-AE trajectories plateaued, then declined. A significant (p< .01) decrease occurred in the slope of DLS-AE trajectories following school exit. High DLS-AE scores predicted participation in postsecondary education (χ25 [n= 73]= 27.83, p< .001). Autism symptom severity predicted participation in employment (χ25 [n= 58]= 27.54, p< .001). These findings provide evidence that DLS decline in adults with ASD, specifically after school exit, and highlight the importance of DLS in normative adult outcomes. Future work should examine the trajectories of DLS in middle and later adulthood and consider intervention targets for bolstering DLS following school exit.

Student Mobility and Violent Crime Exposure at Baltimore City Public Elementary Schools

High levels of school mobility are a problem in many urban districts. Many of these same districts are also dealing with high rates of violent crime. In this study, we use 6 years (2010–2011 to 2015–2016) of administrative data from Baltimore City public elementary school students and crime data from the Baltimore Police Department to examine whether changes in violent crime at schools are associated with the likelihood of school exit. Using logistic regression with school fixed effects to adjust for constant differences between schools, we find that students are more likely to leave following years with higher levels of violent crime at their school. These associations are strongest for students ineligible for free or reduced-price meals and from safer neighborhoods.

Teenaged, married, and out of school: Effects of early marriage and childbirth on school exit in Eastern Africa

This article investigates the relationship of early marriage to school participation and whether other factors, including individual or family characteristics and childbirth, moderate the relationship. It uses national household survey data for Eastern Africa, pooled at the regional level. Overall, findings confirm that marriage and schooling appear largely incompatible across the Eastern Africa region at present. The results of the main analysis indicate that married girls are roughly 31 percentage points less likely to be attending school than their unmarried peers. The effect of marriage on school participation trumps other observed factors, including childbirth. Based on an extended analysis using the timing of marriage and two consecutive years of education data in Malawi and Kenya, the article concludes that marriage is a predictor of subsequent school exit.