Standardized Academic Tests Research Articles

Artificial Intelligence and Psychoanalysis: A New Concept of Research Methodology

The recent high performance of ChatGPT on several standardized academic tests has thrust the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) into the mainstream conversation about the future of education. As deep learning is poised to shift the teaching paradigm, it is essential to have a clear understanding of its effects on the current education system to ensure sustainable development and deployment of AI-driven technologies at schools and universities. Hence, AI behavior cannot be fully understood without human and social sciences. After the imaginary and symbolic registers, AI is the third register of identification. Therefore, AI extends the movement that is at work in the Lacanian interpretation of the mirror stage and Oedipus complex and which Latour’s reading helps us to clarify. From this point of view, I describe an AI system as a set of three contrasting forces: the human desire for identification, logic, and machinery. In the “Miscomputation and information” section, I show how this interpretative model improves our understanding of AI. Systematic research on psychoanalytic treatments has been limited by several factors, including a belief that clinical experience can demonstrate the effectiveness of psychoanalysis, rendering systematic research unnecessary, the view that psychoanalytic research would be difficult or impossible to accomplish, and a concern that research would distort the treatment being delivered.

New Era of Artificial Intelligence in Education: Towards a Sustainable Multifaceted Revolution

The recent high performance of ChatGPT on several standardized academic tests has thrust the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) into the mainstream conversation about the future of education. As deep learning is poised to shift the teaching paradigm, it is essential to have a clear understanding of its effects on the current education system to ensure sustainable development and deployment of AI-driven technologies at schools and universities. This research aims to investigate the potential impact of AI on education through review and analysis of the existing literature across three major axes: applications, advantages, and challenges. Our review focuses on the use of artificial intelligence in collaborative teacher–student learning, intelligent tutoring systems, automated assessment, and personalized learning. We also report on the potential negative aspects, ethical issues, and possible future routes for AI implementation in education. Ultimately, we find that the only way forward is to embrace the new technology, while implementing guardrails to prevent its abuse.

Psychological proximity improves reasoning in academic aptitude tests

Performance on standardized academic aptitude tests (AAT) can determine important life outcomes. However, it is not clear whether and which aspects of the content of test questions affect performance. We examined the effect of psychological distance embedded in test questions. In Study 1 (N = 41,209), we classified the content of existing AAT questions as invoking proximal versus distal details. We found better performance with proximal compared to distal questions, especially for low-achieving examinees. Studies 2 and 3 manipulated the distance of questions adapted from AATs and examined three moderators: overall AAT score, working-memory capacity, and presence of irrelevant information. In Study 2 (N = 129), proximity (versus distance) improved the performance of low-achieving participants. In Study 3 (N = 1744), a field study, among low-achieving examinees, proximity improved performance on questions that included irrelevant information. Together, these results suggest that the psychological distance that is invoked by the content of test questions has important consequences for performance in real-life high-stakes tests.

Measuring Students’ Sense of School Catholic Identity

As a ministry of the Catholic Church, Catholic schools are charged with educating stu­dents’ hearts and minds. Multiple standardized academic tests and other student assessments are available for monitoring both student and teacher outcomes in Catholic schools, but fewer measures exist for considering the school’s faith-related mission. Although tests of student religious knowledge and benchmarks related to specific Catholic elements of the school are available, we do not yet have a robust set of instruments that provide teachers and leaders an understanding of their progress in providing a school environment permeated by Catholic culture and faith. To consider how students in Catholic schools perceive the Catholicity of their school and how these perceptions vary among different student groups, we developed, piloted, and validated the Sense of School Catholic Iden­tity Survey (SSCI). This 20-­item survey measures Grade 5 through 8 students’ perceptions of their Catholic school as personal and invitational, sacramental, unitive, and eucharistic. Findings from the pilot study suggest that responses differ by student grade level, religious tradition, and gender. Future testing of the scale will examine school­-level differences in Catholic identity.

Youth well-being predicts later academic success

Young people worldwide face new challenges as climate change and complex family structures disrupt societies. These challenges impact on youth’s subjective well-being, with evidence of decline across many countries. While the burden of negative well-being on productivity is widely examined amongst adults, its cost among youth remains understudied. The current research comprehensively investigates the relationship between youth subjective well-being and standardized academic test scores. We use highly controlled machine learning models on a moderately-sized high-school student sample (N ~ 3400), with a composite subjective well-being index (composed of depression, anxiety and positive affect), to show that students with greater well-being are more likely to have higher academic scores 7–8 months later (on Numeracy: β* = .033, p = .020). This effect emerges while also accounting for previous test scores and other confounding factors. Further analyses with each well-being measure, suggests that youth who experience greater depression have lower academic achievement (Numeracy: β* = − .045, p = .013; Reading: β* = − .033, p = .028). By quantifying the impact of youth well-being, and in particular of lowering depression, this research highlights its importance for the next generation's health and productivity.

Is there a relation between visual motor integration and academic achievement in school-aged children with and without ADHD?

ABSTRACT Visual-motor integration, motor coordination, and visual perception are associated with academic achievement in early school-aged children; however, our understanding of these associations in older school-aged children and children with neurodevelopmental disorders is limited. A well-characterized, clinically evaluated sample of 39 children with and without ADHD ages 8–13 (M = 10.07, SD = 1.56; 14 girls; 67.5% White/non-Hispanic) were administered standardized academic and visual-motor integration tests. Results: Backward entry regression analyses that initially included age, sex, socioeconomic status, ADHD symptoms, comorbidities, and IQ revealed that better visual perception uniquely predicted better-developed reading (β = .38) and math skills (β = .21; both p < .03), whereas better motor coordination was associated with better reading (β = .25), writing (β = .50), and math skills (β = .21 all p < .05). The integration of visual perception and motor coordination processes was uniquely associated only with math skills (β = .28; p = .007). Children with ADHD exhibited significantly lower visual-motor integration (d = 1.16) and potentially motor coordination (d = 0.51), but did not differ from Non-ADHD children in terms of visual perception (d = 0.03). These findings extend prior evidence from younger, neurotypical samples, and indicate that underdeveloped visual-motor integration and/or its subcomponents (visual perception and motor coordination) reflect unique risk factors for academic underachievement in school-aged children’s math, reading, and written language skills.

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and standardized academic tests: Reliability across respondent type and age.

Exploiting nation-wide data from the Danish National Birth Cohort, we show that children’s emotional and behavioral problems measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) are closely related to their performance in standardized academic tests for reading and mathematics in sixth grade. The relationship is remarkably linear across the entire distribution for both the total difficulties score and subscale scores of the SDQ; higher scores on the SDQ (more problems) are related to worse performance in academic tests. We assess the similarity across respondent type; parent (child age 7 and 11), teacher (child age 11) and self-reported scores (child age 11), and find that teacher and parent reported scores have very similar slopes in the SDQ–test score relationship, while the child reported SDQ in relation to the academic test performance has a flatter slope.

Factors Associated With Educational Support in Young Adolescents With ADHD

Objective: This study aimed to examine patterns of use and factors associated with education support use in students with ADHD during early adolescence. Method: Participants were 130 adolescents (M = 13.7 years, SD = 1.1) with ADHD. Educational support use and the factors associated with use were collected by parent and teacher questionnaires and standardized academic tests during the 2014-2015 school years. Support rates and categories are described. Logistic regression models examine individual, family, and school variables associated with support versus no support. Results: About two thirds of students with ADHD (60%) had accessed education support in the current school year, which included social support (36%), Individualized Educational Plans (IEPs; 22%), Student Support Groups (SSGs; 18%), counseling (17%), mentoring (15%), and homework support (9%). Academic risk (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 2.30, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [1.03, 5.14], p = .04), behavioral problems (adjusted OR = 1.47, 95% CI = [1.01, 2.14], p = .047), and attending a Catholic school (adjusted OR = 5.10, 95% CI = [1.59, 16.42], p = .006) were associated with receiving support independent of adolescent age, gender, ADHD medication use, and socioeconomic status. Conclusions: Future research needs to determine whether education support makes a difference to long-term outcomes for students with ADHD and to determine why some students at academic risk receive no support.

Affected Aspects Regarding Literacy and Numeracy in Children Treated for Brain Tumors.

The aim of this study was to investigate the test results of reading speed, reading comprehension, word comprehension, spelling, basic arithmetic skills, and number sense (intuitive understanding of numbers) by children treated for brain tumors. This is a retrospective study based on medical records, including standardized academic tests. In the years of 2010 to 2014, all children in the area of Stockholm between 7 and 18 years (IQ <70) who had no major linguistic or motor difficulties after they had undergone treatment for brain tumors were offered a special education assessment one year after treatment, at school start, or the year before a transition from one stage to another. Our results indicate that children treated for a brain tumor are at risk of having difficulties in spelling, reading speed, and arithmetic and that the test performance may decline over years in arithmetic and spelling. Children diagnosed at age 0 to 6 years may need extra tutoring at school start, especially in basic arithmetic skills. In both reading and mathematics, many children perform better on tests focused on understanding than on tests focused on speed. Continuous special needs assessments including different aspects of literacy and numeracy, are important for understanding each child's specific needs.

Attention-memory training yields behavioral and academic improvements in children diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder comorbid with a learning disorder.

BackgroundRecent studies have suggested that children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may benefit from computerized cognitive training. Therapy implementation is especially complicated when ADHD is associated with learning disorders (LDs). This study tested the efficacy of a computer-based cognitive training program, namely, computerized cognitive training (CCT), in children with ADHD comorbid with an LD (ADHD-LD), with or without psychostimulant medication.Materials and methodsAfter diagnostic evaluations, 27 children with ADHD-LD (8 unmedicated and 19 medicated) participated in CCT, which is intended to improve attention, memory, reasoning, visual processing, and executive functioning. The participants completed 24 1-hour sessions over 3 months. Neuropsychometric and standardized academic test results before and after training were compared to assess treatment efficacy. Shapiro–Wilk normality tests were applied, and subsequent Wilcoxon tests were used to identify significant differences in pre-versus post-training performance.ResultsAfter CAT, children diagnosed with ADHD-LD showed 1) improvements in trained skills, measured directly within the software and indirectly by external psychometric tests; 2) improvements in attention, memory, and some executive functioning; 3) improvements in academic performance, particularly in mathematics; and 4) reductions in maladaptive behavioral features.ConclusionThe present findings suggest that cognitive training programs should be explored further as potential adjunctive therapies to improve outcomes in children with ADHD-LD.

School Grades and Standardized Test Scores of Children with and Without Obesity in South-East Mexico

Background: Obesity has negative impact on health and socialization. Previous studies found that children with obesity have lower grades, but it is unclear: a) if specific subject might affect their grade point averages, b) if the results of standardized tests and school grades are the same for children with and without obesity in a community where pediatric obesity is highly prevalent. Objectives: The current study aimed to compare school grades and standardized test scores of children with and without obesity in a probabilistic sample of primary school children from Southern Mexico, where overweight/obesity is highly prevalent. Methods: The study measured a probabilistic sample of 2971 children going to public primary schools in Merida, Mexico, transformed the anthropometric data into body mass index (BMI) z-scores according the world health organization (WHO) reference values and categorized children according to their BMI status, and the scores they obtained in national standardized tests (n = 2791). The study analyzed the association between children with/without obesity and their academic performance in terms of school grades and standardized tests using mean comparison T-tests and multinomial logistic regression models using Stata 12. Results: Differences were observed between obese and non-obese children in overall grade point averages; however, no differences were observed on national standardized academic test scores. In analyzing specific academic subject areas, no differences were observed in grades for math, literature, social sciences, life sciences and art. The only significant difference observed was in the grade for physical education with obese students earning lower grades than their non-obese counterparts. Conclusions: There were no significant differences between the children with obesity and those without obesity in standardized tests. Students without obesity had significantly higher grade point average than their peers with obesity (8.4 and 8.5, respectively; P < 0.000).

Supervised item response models for informative prediction

Supporting human decision-making is a major goal of data mining. The more decision-making is critical, the more interpretability is required in the predictive model. This paper proposes a new framework to build a fully interpretable predictive model for questionnaire data, while maintaining a reasonable prediction accuracy with regard to the final outcome. Such a model has applications in project risk assessment, in healthcare, in social studies, and, presumably, in any real-world application that relies on questionnaire data for informative and accurate prediction. Our framework is inspired by models in item response theory (IRT), which were originally developed in psychometrics with applications to standardized academic tests. We extend these models, which are essentially unsupervised, to the supervised setting. For model estimation, we introduce a new iterative algorithm by combining Gauss---Hermite quadrature with an expectation---maximization algorithm. The learned probabilistic model is linked to the metric learning framework for informative and accurate prediction. The model is validated by three real-world data sets: Two are from information technology project failure prediction and the other is an international social survey about people's happiness. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that leverages the IRT framework to provide informative and accurate prediction on ordinal questionnaire data.

The increasing impact of socioeconomics and race on standardized academic test scores across elementary, middle, and high school.

For students and schools, the current policy is to measure success via standardized testing. Yet the immutable factors of socioeconomic status (SES) and race have, consistently, been implicated in fostering an achievement gap. The current study explores, at the school-level, the impact of these factors on test scores. Percentage of students proficient for Language and Math was analyzed from 452 schools across the state of New Jersey. By high school, 52% of the variance in Language and 59% in Math test scores can be accounted for by SES and racial factors. At this level, a 1% increase in school minority population corresponds to a 0.19 decrease in percent Language proficient and 0.33 decrease for Math. These results have significant implications as they suggest that school-level interventions to improve academic achievement scores will be stymied by socioeconomic and racial factors and efforts to improve the achievement gap via testing have largely measured it.

Response to Intervention and Retention for Children with Specific Learning Disabilities: Differences in Academic Achievement between Retained and Non-Retained Students

Research indicates that the practice of grade-level retention may have negative effects on students; nevertheless it is often used in practice for students who fail to meet academic standards. In contrast to retention, response to intervention (RtI) is a sound practice that is based on a preventive framework and utilizes differentiated instruction and progress monitoring to meet student needs. The present study examined a sample of students from a district where RtI implementation was being scaled-up, but retention also occurred. Academic assessment data for those students identified as having specific learning disabilities in the area of reading were examined to determine whether there were differences between students who were retained prior to referral and their non-retained peers. Results indicated that the retained students performed significantly worse on the reading comprehension and math domains of the standardized academic tests and had fewer progress monitoring data points collected prior to referral for evaluation. The results suggested that retention may have offered little academic skills benefit and, perhaps, even a delay in the time to eligibility for special education. The implications for the impact of retention on academic skills are discussed and future directions for research are presented.

Relationships among Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Anthropometric Measures, and Neurocognitive Functioning in Adolescents with Severe Obesity

To explore associations between measures of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and sleep quality, anthropometrics, and neurocognitive functioning in severely obese adolescents. This was a cross-sectional pilot study performed at an academic medical center in 37 severely obese (body mass index [BMI] >97th percentile) adolescents. Study evaluations included polysomnography, BMI, waist circumference, and standardized neurocognitive tests to assess memory, executive functioning, psychomotor efficiency, academic achievement, and an approximation of full-scale IQ. Outcome data were evaluated categorically, based on clinical criteria for the diagnosis of OSA, and continuously to quantify associations between sleep parameters, anthropometrics, and neurocognitive test results. Sleep fragmentation and poorer sleep quality were associated with reduced psychomotor efficiency, poorer memory recall, and lower scores on standardized academic tests. Having evidence of OSA was associated with lower math scores, but not with other neurocognitive measures. BMI and waist circumference were negatively associated with oxygen saturation. Our pilot study findings suggest that sleep fragmentation and poorer sleep quality have implications for neurocognitive functioning in obese adolescents. The epidemic of childhood obesity has dire implications, not only for increasing cardiometabolic pathology, but also for possibly promoting less readily apparent neurologic alterations associated with poor sleep quality.

Associations of Physical Fitness and Academic Performance Among Schoolchildren*

Public schools provide opportunities for physical activity and fitness surveillance, but are evaluated and funded based on students' academic performance, not their physical fitness. Empirical research evaluating the connections between fitness and academic performance is needed to justify curriculum allocations to physical activity programs. Analyses were based on a convenience sample of 254,743 individually matched standardized academic (TAKS™) and fitness (FITNESSGRAM(®) ) test records of students, grades 3-11, collected by 13 Texas school districts. We categorized fitness results in quintiles by age and gender and used mixed effects regression models to compare the academic performance of the top and bottom fitness groups for each test. All fitness variables except body mass index (BMI) showed significant, positive associations with academic performance after adjustment for socio-demographic covariates, with standardized mean difference effect sizes ranging from .07 to .34. Cardiovascular fitness showed the largest interquintile difference in TAKS score (32-75 points), followed by curl-ups. Additional adjustment for BMI and curl-ups showed dose-response associations between cardiovascular fitness and academic scores (p < .001 for both genders and outcomes). Analysis of BMI demonstrated limited, nonlinear association with academic performance after socio-demographic and fitness adjustments. Fitness was strongly and significantly related to academic performance. Cardiovascular fitness showed a dose-response association with academic performance independent of other socio-demographic and fitness variables. The association appears to peak in late middle to early high school. We recommend that policymakers consider physical education (PE) mandates in middle high school, school administrators consider increasing PE time, and PE practitioners emphasize cardiovascular fitness.

Low Aerobic Fitness and Obesity Are Associated with Lower Standardized Test Scores in Children

To investigate whether aerobic fitness and obesity in school children are associated with standardized test performance. Ethnically diverse (n = 1989) 5th, 7th, and 9th graders attending California schools comprised the sample. Aerobic fitness was determined by a 1-mile run/walk test; body mass index (BMI) was obtained from state-mandated measurements. California standardized test scores were obtained from the school district. Students whose mile run/walk times exceeded California Fitnessgram standards or whose BMI exceeded Centers for Disease Control sex- and age-specific body weight standards scored lower on California standardized math, reading, and language tests than students with desirable BMI status or fitness level, even after controlling for parent education among other covariates. Ethnic differences in standardized test scores were consistent with ethnic differences in obesity status and aerobic fitness. BMI-for-age was no longer a significant multivariate predictor when covariates included fitness level. Low aerobic fitness is common among youth and varies among ethnic groups, and aerobic fitness level predicts performance on standardized tests across ethnic groups. More research is needed to uncover the physiological mechanisms by which aerobic fitness may contribute to performance on standardized academic tests.

Chile: Academic performance and educational management under a rigid employment regime

Working with census information on standardized academic performance tests and using different estimation techniques, this article analyses sociodemographic and management factors affecting the performance of Chile’s municipal schools. The evidence suggests that the system’s lack of flexibility, particularly where teacher dismissal is concerned, is an important factor but not the main cause of poor academic performance. Conversely, the differences in academic performance between municipal schools that can be attributed to management are almost twice the standard deviation of the System for Measuring the Quality of Education (simce) performance test and 20 times the increment ascribed to the “complete school day” initiative, which costs the equivalent of half a point of gross domestic product (gdp).

Children’s Physical Fitness and Academic Performance

Background: Childhood obesity is a major public health threat. Increased fitness may have a positive influence on cognitive performance in both adults and children. Purpose: To examine which aspects of children’s fitness assessment are associated with their performance on four different academic areas. Methods: FITNESSGRAM measures aerobic capacity, abdominal strength, upper body strength/endurance, flexibility, andtrunk lift. Gender and a socio-economic status proxy were compared with mean group performance scores across four subscales: mathematics, reading/language arts, science, and social studies of a statewide standardized academic performance test on a sample of 968 5th grade students (50.7% male; mean age = 10.6 years). Results: Achievement test scores were significantly better for children who were in the Healthy Fitness Zone (HFZ) for aerobic capacity and abdominal strength tests when compared to children who were unable to achieve the healthy zone. Children in the HFZ for upper body strength performed significantly better in math. Children in the HFZ for flexibility performed significantly better in math and science. No differences were found in academic performance when children in the HFZ for trunk lift were compared to children not in the healthy zone. When all FITNESSGRAM measures were used in a full factorial ANOVA with Body Mass Index (BMI), gender and meal program (a proxy variable for socioeconomic status) as covariates, aerobic capacity was found to be the only fitness variable consistently appearing as important. It was always significant as a main effect variable while no other main effect fitness variable achieved significance for any WESTEST subject. Two-way, three-way, and four-way interactions always included aerobic fitness and no other fitness measure was universal in these interactions. Discussion: Whereas, aerobic fitness appears universally important in academic success, additional mechanisms may be at work due to the several interactions that achieved significance. The interactions may be an indication of the importance of overall fitness in addition to aerobic fitness. These findings support the development and implementation of childhood cardiovascular risk surveillance programs that not only evaluate children’s overweight risks but also their fitness. Translation to Health Education Practice: Increased focus on ways to improve children’s fitness levels may create the need to reevaluate current policy recommendations for children’s physical education.

Feeding the Pipeline: Academic Skills Training for Predental Students

This article reports the outcomes of an evaluation conducted to determine if an academic skills training program for undergraduate predental students from underrepresented minority backgrounds increased the students' standardized academic skills test scores for vocabulary, reading comprehension, reading rates, spelling, and math as well as subject-specific test results in biology, chemistry, and physics. Data from standardized academic skill tests and subject-specific tests were collected at the beginning and end of the 1998 to 2006 Pipeline Programs, six-week summer enrichment programs for undergraduate predental students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In total, 179 students (75.4 percent African American, 7.3 percent Hispanic, 5.6 percent Asian American, 5 percent white) attended the programs during these nine summers. Scores on the Nelson-Denny Reading Test showed that the students improved their vocabulary scores (percentile ranks before/after: 46.80 percent/59.56 percent; p<.001), reading comprehension scores (47.21 percent/62.67 percent; p<.001), and reading rates (34.01 percent/78.31 percent; p<.001) from the beginning to the end of the summer programs. Results on the Wide Range Achievement Test III showed increases in spelling (73.58 percent/86.22 percent; p<.001) and math scores (56.98 percent/81.28 percent; p<.001). The students also improved their subject-specific scores in biology (39.07 percent/63.42 percent; p<.001), chemistry (20.54 percent/51.01 percent; p<.001), and physics (35.12 percent/61.14 percent; p<.001). To increase the number of underrepresented minority students in the dental school admissions pool, efforts are needed to prepare students from disadvantaged backgrounds for this process. These data demonstrate that a six-week enrichment program significantly improved the academic skills and basic science knowledge scores of undergraduate predental students. These improvements have the potential to enhance the performance of these students in college courses and thus increase their level of competitiveness in the dental school admissions process.