State Standardized Test Research Articles

Allow Me to Explain: Benefits of Explaining Extend to Distal Academic Performance.

How does the act of explaining influence learning? Prior work has studied effects of explaining through a predominantly proximal lens, measuring short-term outcomes or manipulations within lab settings. Here, we ask whether the benefits of explaining extend to academic performance over time. Specifically, does the quality and frequency of student explanations predict students' later performance on standardized tests of math and English? In Study 1 (N = 127 5th-6th graders), participants completed a causal learning activity during which their explanation quality was evaluated. Controlling for prior test scores, explanation quality directly predicted both math and English standardized test scores the following year. In Study 2 (N = 20,384 10th graders), participants reported aspects of teachers' explanations and their own. Controlling for prior test scores, students' own explanations predicted both math and English state standardized test scores, and teacher explanations were linked to test performance through students' own explanations. Taken together, these findings suggest that benefits of explaining may result in part from the development of a metacognitive explanatory skill that transfers across domains and over time. Implications for cognitive science, pedagogy, and education are discussed.

TELLTALE SIGN OF CALIBER TEACHERS: SURFEIT OF BRILLIANCE IN TEACHING ELEMENTARY LEARNERS

The teacher is the main actor in the learning process. It is teachers who consider effective learning strategies to be applied. A large number of variations in the quality of teaching are explained by the characteristics of teachers, teachers are central in the process teaching and learning, teachers have a major role in building student personality, teachers are learning managers in a large system of education that enlightens students. This study will lend to the body of knowledge surrounding teacher effectiveness. It is also significant in that it is transferable to a greater population of teachers in kindergarten through sixth grade and therefore may have implications for understanding and improving teacher effectiveness in the greater education population. The researcher made these qualitative assumptions that consist of the methods used in the process of qualitative research (Creswell 2003). The procedures used by the researcher are inductive and are based on the researchers own experience in collecting and analyzing data. The research here is the product of the values of the researcher. The implication for positive social change of this qualitative phenomenological research study was guided by four research questions. Despite the limitations, after the review and ensuing analysis of interview transcripts and observation notes the researcher was able to gain insight into the phenomenon of characteristics of high-quality teachers. It was found that high-quality teachers use a variety of strategies that are carefully chosen based on student needs, student learning styles, and student abilities to meet the needs of diverse learners. Higher-order questioning was identified as a prevalent teaching strategy used in the classrooms of high-quality teachers which resulted in a high level of classroom discussion. A high level of student engagement was also prevalent in the classrooms of high-quality teachers. A quantitative study could be conducted to further investigate the relationship between high-quality teachers and their impact on student achievement about GPA and scores on state standardized tests. A qualitative study could be conducted to determine strategies for facilitating the development and growth of the identified characteristics of high-quality teaching to improve teaching quality KEYWORDS: Telltale Sign, Caliber Teachers, Surfeit of Brilliance, Teaching Elementary Learners

Letting go of what doesn’t work in education: A conversation with Rick Ginsberg and Yong Zhao

Rick Ginsberg and Yong Zhao want educators to question the status quo and clear out ineffective practices to make room for K-12 reforms that work. Their 2023 book, Duck and Cover: Confronting Dubious Practices in Education, Ginsberg and Zhao examine kindergarten readiness, college- and career-readiness, reading proficiency by 3rd grade, social and emotional learning, education technology, class size, dress codes, state standardized testing, meta-analysis, and more.

Framing School Mathematics Challenges Inside and Outside Metropolitan Areas

Background/Context: The problems that school district leaders identify and how they frame them have consequences—for both policy implementation and the ways that teachers respond. Although that is likely true in all community contexts (from rural to urban, inside and outside metropolitan centers), the influence of broader discourses associated with accountability reforms centered around state standardized testing may not be uniform across those contexts. Purpose/Objective/Research Question or Focus of Study: In this article, we report the results of an interview study we conducted with leaders in 50 school districts across the U.S. state of Missouri, in which we investigated what they identified as—and how they framed—their districts’ most salient problems related to mathematics. Guiding our analysis were the following questions: (1) What do those who oversee school districts’ mathematics instruction and curriculum identify as mathematics-related problems, and how do they frame those problems? (2) Do leaders’ identification and framing of problems differ with respect to districts’ size and proximity to metropolitan centers? (3) If so, to what extent are institutional factors, including mathematics achievement, economic resources, the presence of a mathematics-specific leader, and the district’s pedagogical commitments, predictive of leaders’ identification and framing of problems? Research Design: In 50 school districts in Missouri, sampled from different categories of size and proximity to metropolitan centers, we interviewed the district leader most responsible for overseeing mathematics curriculum and instruction about their mathematics-related challenges. We also collected contextual information from governmental websites, including population data, student achievement rates, student racial and economic demographics, and district economic resources (i.e., per-pupil expenditures). Through qualitative analysis we identified what leaders identified as their most pressing challenge and how they framed that challenge. Through regression analysis we identified which community and district characteristics were predictive of leaders’ problem identification and framing. Conclusions/Recommendations: Our results point to meaningful differences in leaders’ identification and framing of problems related to whether they work within metropolitan areas. In particular, we argue that leaders in nonmetropolitan districts appear more likely to adopt the frame offered by the “corporate model of schooling,” defining and framing problems around improvement in standardized test scores, whereas leaders in metropolitan areas are more likely to define problems in terms of equity and the ways that students experience school mathematics. And leaders from smaller districts were more likely to employ a strictly “management” framing of outcomes-related problems, describing responses focused exclusively on changing district programs and structures (rather than a “learning” frame that foregrounds supporting and developing staff). Institutional factors predictive of leaders’ identification of problems concerning equity and student experience included per-pupil expenditures, higher rates of test proficiency, commitment to inquiry-based pedagogy, and the presence of a district mathematics leader.

The Signaling Power of Unexcused Absence from School

State and national school accountability policies situate preventing chronic absenteeism on par with meeting state standardized test benchmarks. We question relying on school attendance as both a component of accountability policies and a means of enhancing equity in schools. Our research suggests out-of-school factors unrelated to missed instruction account for most of the associations between absences and test score achievement—with unexcused absences driving those associations. Excessive absences—and particularly unexcused absences—don’t harm students mainly through missed instruction. Instead, they reflect out-of-school harms students endure that have produced inequalities for years—and will continue to do so even if students show up or parents call in.

The short- and long-run impacts of secondary school absences

We provide novel evidence on the causal impacts of student absences in middle and high school on state test scores, course grades, and educational attainment using a rich administrative dataset that tracks the date and class period of each absence. We use two similar but distinct identification strategies that address potential endogeneity due to time-varying student-level shocks by exploiting within-student, between-subject variation in class-specific absences. We also leverage information on the timing of absences to show that absences that occur after the annual window for state standardized testing do not affect test scores, providing a further check of our identification strategy. Both approaches yield similar results. We find that absences in middle and high school harm contemporaneous student achievement and longer-term educational attainment: On average, missing 10 classes reduces math or English Language Arts test scores by 3–4% of a standard deviation and course grades by 17–18% of a standard deviation. 10 total absences across all subjects in 9th grade reduce both the probability of on-time graduation and ever enrolling in college by 2%. Learning loss due to school absences can have profound economic and social consequences.

Examining the Actor Coalitions and Discourse Coalitions of the Opt-Out Movement in New York: A Discourse Network Analysis

Background/Context Since 2013, opting out of state standardized tests has become a movement—the grassroots, organized efforts to refuse to take high-stakes state standardized tests. In particular, opt-out rates in the state of New York have been consistently fluctuating around 20%. Purpose/Objective This study aims to examine the actor coalitions and discourse coalitions that have propelled the opt-out movement in the state of New York—the movement's epicenter with the highest opt-out rate in the United States. Conceptual Framework This study is conceptually grounded in the advocacy coalition framework (ACF), a prominent conceptual lens to investigate the formation of coalitions and their impact on policymaking. The ACF posits that advocacy coalitions are forged by policy actors who have similar policy preferences. By contrast, differences in policy preferences are manifested in the discourse that serves to defend or propose coherent arguments as justifications for policy preferences held by the opposition coalitions. Research Design This study compiled the Opt-out Discourse Data Set by using data from 323 press articles and 52 archival documents from 2015 to 2018. Each news article or archival document was coded with three variables: movement actors, statements articulated by the actors, and the actors’ sentiment toward the statements. An actor-statement bipartite network, an actor coalition network, and a discourse coalition network were created, respectively. Next, Freeman degree centrality was calculated to identify major actors and their statements. The network metrics of density and connectedness of the two competing coalitions were calculated to compare the coalitions’ network structure. Findings In the actor coalition network, the movement advocacy coalition is clearly more densely connected than the movement opposition coalition in terms of the number of actors, coalition density, and coalition connectedness. The discourse coalition network shows similar patterns: the movement advocacy coalition is densely connected, as evidenced by the numbers of nodes in each coalition and the network metrics of coalition density and connectedness. Conclusions/Recommendations This study concludes with a discussion on how the future of the opt-out movement depends on (1) how the movement advocacy coalition continues to amass power and influence in education policymaking, and (2) how the New York State Education Department exercises its power over implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Moreover, this article demonstrates the application of discourse network analysis to examine qualitative data in education research. The discourse network approach is particularly instrumental in explaining a policy output by identifying coalitions and their interactions within and across the coalitions.

Evolution of the Content and Quality of Standardized Tests in Mathematics in Ukraine

The evolution of the content and quality of written state standardized final and entrance testing in mathematics in Ukraine, from the first attempt to implement in 1994 until now, is considered in the article. We describe the features and stages of development of Ukrainian standardized tests in mathematics (external independent assessment and state final attestation), analyze the causes of successes and failures and also prospects for their further improvement. Based on our own statistical experiment, we compare the quality of mathematical preparation of Ukrainian graduates who entered the pedagogical universities of Ukraine in 1994, 2005 and 2020. According to this experiment, we draw conclusions about the existing problems of ensuring the proper quality of mathematics education in Ukraine and give recommendations on possible solutions to these problems.

Refusing the Test: Debating Assessment and Accountability in Public Education

Through widespread “opt-out” efforts over the past several years, parent and student activists have pressured schools, districts, states, and the federal government to reconsider the extent and limits of state-mandated assessments. This case study focuses on the ethical questions faced by a principal in a school divided over state standardized testing. Facing a new wave of refusals, this leader must respond to parents and teachers who have concerns about testing, as well as other members of her community who support these assessments. This case considers how a school leader might balance different, competing obligations: to respect parents’ rights, acknowledge teachers’ concerns, support student learning, and implement district and state policy.

The Interaction of Gender and Pedagogy on Learning Motivations in a Secondary PBL Mathematics Classroom

The purpose of this study was to investigate the interactive effects of gender, learning motivations, and pedagogy (Project-Based Learning [PBL] and conventional) on secondary mathematics learning. In order to measure their academic achievement and learning motivations, 165 secondary students were given a state standardized mathematics test and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire. Study results indicated that pedagogy and gender had no impact on academic achievement. Pedagogy played a stronger role in rehearsal, peer learning, and task value. Gender played a stronger role in test anxiety, organization, help seeking, and control of learning. PBL students seemed to value and actively engage in the mathematics more than did the conventional students.

Cognitive regulation outdoes behavior regulation in predicting state standardized test scores over time

Individual differences in self-regulation have been a topic of increased empirical research. However, few investigations have been conducted on how sub-components of self-regulation differentially predict education outcomes over time. We examined cognitive and behavior regulation as predictors of middle-school students’ (n = 127) long-term academic achievement. It has been previously reported that behavior regulation, not cognitive regulation, predicts state standardized test scores in the first year (Modrek et al. 2019). However, here we show that after two years, this pattern flips in that cognitive regulation, not behavior regulation, predicts state standardized test scores for both math and English. We analyzed the mediating role of learning using structural equation modeling, suggesting the differing roles of self-regulation in education where certain facets may or may not affect students’ long-term outcomes.

Tipping Point: Effect of the Number of In-school Suspensions on Academic Failure

There is extensive evidence suggesting that school suspension is correlated with poor academic performance. However, many studies examining the association between school suspension and achievement focus on the effects of out-of-school suspension specifically. While in-school suspension is offered as a less harmful alternative consequence to out-of-school suspension, the effects of in-school suspension on academic achievement are largely unknown. This article examines the association between in-school suspensions and academic failure on standardized achievement tests. The study utilized secondary data from two cohorts of 380,826 ninth-grade students enrolled in Texas public schools to investigate how many in-school suspensions result in failure on a state standardized achievement test. Our results show that a single in-school suspension is predictive of significant risk for academic failure (greater than 25% chance of failure) on a state-wide standardized test controlling for a host of individual and school characteristics. We also find that this relationship between discipline and risk for standardized test failure is more pronounced for students of color. The implications for school psychologists in terms of curtailing the potential negative impact of in-school suspension on student achievement are discussed.

Developing Ambitious Mathematics Instruction Through Web-Based Coaching: A Randomized Field Trial

This article describes and evaluates a web-based coaching program designed to support teachers in implementing Common Core–aligned math instruction. Web-based coaching programs can be operated at relatively lower costs, are scalable, and make it more feasible to pair teachers with coaches who have expertise in their content area and grade level. Results from our randomized field trial document sizable and sustained effects on both teachers’ ability to analyze instruction and on their instructional practice, as measured by the Mathematical Quality of Instruction instrument and student surveys. However, these improvements in instruction did not result in corresponding increases in math test scores as measured by state standardized tests or interim assessments. We discuss several possible explanations for this pattern of results.

The Short- and Long-Run Impacts of Secondary School Absences

We provide novel evidence on the causal impact of student absences in middle and high school on state test scores, course grades, and educational attainment using a rich administrative dataset that includes the date and class period of each absence. Our identification strategy addresses potential endogeneity due to time-varying student-level shocks by exploiting the fact that in a given year, there exists within-student, between-class variation in absences. We also leverage information on the timing of absences to show that absences that occur after the annual window for state standardized testing do not appear to affect test scores, which provides a further check of our identification strategy. We find that absences in middle and high school harm contemporaneous student achievement and longer-term educational attainment: On average, missing 10 math classes reduces math test scores by 7% of a standard deviation, math course grades by 19% of a standard deviation, the probability of on-time graduation by 8%, and the probability of college enrollment by 7%. Similar results hold for absences in English Language Arts classes. These results suggest that absences in middle school and high school are just as harmful, if not more so, than absences in elementary school. Moreover, the timing of absences during the school year matters, as both the occurrence and the impact of absences are dynamic phenomena.

Community Gun Violence as a Social Determinant of Elementary School Achievement

ABSTRACTThe association of indirect exposure to firearm-related violence and standardized test scores among third grade elementary school children were analyzed using geospatial mapping of police department data for all gunshots in Syracuse, NY (n = 2, 127) and state standardized test scores from 2009-2015. Confirmed gunshots were geocoded and mapped across the city and neighborhood school catchment areas. Third grade standardized New York State test scores for English Language Arts (ELA) and math were coded as dichotomous variables of proficient and below proficient scores. State standardized test scores for ELA and math were found to be 50% lower in the elementary schools located within higher concentration gunshot areas, than in elementary schools in lower gunshot areas. Higher levels of gun violence within school catchment areas were significantly associated with higher rates of ELA and math failure (p ≤ .05). These findings suggest that community violence may be an important, though under recognized, social determinant of poor school performance.

Assessment of Exposure to High-Performing Schools and Risk of Adolescent Substance Use

Although school environments are thought to influence health behaviors, experimental data assessing causality are lacking, and which aspects of school environments may be most important for adolescent health are unknown. To test whether exposure to high-performing schools is associated with risky adolescent health behaviors. This natural experiment used admission lotteries, which mimic random assignment, to estimate the association of school environments and adolescent health. A survey of 1270 students who applied to at least 1 of 5 high-performing public charter schools in low-income minority communities in Los Angeles, California. Schools had an academic performance ranked in the top tertile of Los Angeles County public high schools, applicants outnumbered available seats by at least 50, and an admissions lottery was used. Participants included lottery winners (intervention group [n = 694]) and lottery losers (control group [n = 576]) from the end of 8th grade and beginning of 9th grade through the end of 11th grade. Intention-to-treat (ITT) and instrumental variable techniques estimated the association of winning the lottery and attending high-performing schools with health behaviors and whether the association varied by sex. Data were collected from March 11, 2013, through February 22, 2017, and analyzed from October 1, 2017, through July 1, 2018. Schools were considered high performing if they placed in the top tercile of public high schools in LA County on 2012 state standardized tests. Most students attended that same school for 3 years (9th-11th grades). Primary self-reported outcomes were 30-day and high-risk self-reported marijuana use. Additional health outcomes included 30-day alcohol use, alcohol misuse, ever being in a fight, ever having sex, and past-year delinquency. Potential intermediate factors (time studying, truancy, school mobility, school culture, school order, teacher support for college, and proportion of substance-using peers in students' social networks) were also examined. Among the 1270 participating students (52.6% female; mean [SD] age at enrollment, 14.3 [0.5] years), ITT analysis showed that the intervention group reported less marijuana misuse than the control group (mean marijuana misuse score, 0.46 vs 0.71), as well as fewer substance-using peers (9.6% vs 12.7%), more time studying (mean, 2.63 vs 2.49 hours), less truancy (84.3% vs 77.3% with no truancy), greater teacher support for college (mean scores, 7.20 vs 7.02), more orderly schools (mean order score, 7.06 vs 6.83), and less school mobility (21.4% vs 28.4%) (all P < .05). Stratified analyses suggest that among boys, intervention participants had significantly lower marijuana use (mean misuse score, 0.43 vs 0.88; difference, -0.45; 95% CI, -0.78 to -0.13) and alcohol misuse (mean misuse score, 0.52 vs 0.97; difference, -0.44; 95% CI, -0.80 to -0.09) scores compared with control participants, whereas no significant health outcomes were noted for girls. This natural experiment provides evidence that school environments can improve risky behaviors for low-income minority adolescents.

Off to a Slow Start: Four Profiles of Slow Readers in Second Grade

Assessments of oral reading rate in words correct per minute (WCPM) have proliferated in elementary classrooms. This study explores the similarities and differences among students at the end of second grade who demonstrate low WCPM. Using latent profile analysis, readers with low WCPM compared to peers were identified (n = 2,191) from a state-wide assessment database and grouped into four statistically significant profiles based on their reading accuracy, rate, prosody, and comprehension scores. Students in Profile 1 demonstrated relatively high skills across the board, compared to the other “slow readers”; students in Profile 2 demonstrated high accuracy paired with low rate; students in Profile 3 demonstrated low accuracy paired with comparatively high rate; and students in Profile 4 demonstrated low scores across the board. The students who struggled with accuracy (Profiles 3 and 4) also demonstrated more difficulty with comprehension, word recognition, and spelling. The students who struggled most with rate (Profiles 2 and 4) demonstrated more difficulty with prosody. Profile membership predicted students’ scores on a state standardized test of reading one year later, at the end of third grade. These findings suggest that low WCPM can indicate a range of underlying skill difficulties, which may require differentiated support and instruction to support long-term reading proficiency.

Do financial incentives crowd out intrinsic motivation to perform on standardized tests?

Financial incentives linked to academic performance have been proposed as a potentially cost-effective way to support improvement. However, a large literature across disciplines finds that extrinsic incentives, once removed, may crowd out intrinsic motivation on subsequent, similar tasks. We conduct a field experiment where students, parents, and tutors are offered incentives designed to encourage student preparation for a high-stakes state standardized test. The incentives reward performance on a separate low-stakes preparatory assessment designed to measure the same skills as the high-stakes test. Performance on the high-stakes test itself, however, is not incentivized. We find substantial treatment effects on the incented tests but no effect on the non-incented test. We also find suggestive evidence that the incentives crowd out intrinsic motivation to perform well on the non- incented test, but this effect is only temporary. One year later, treated students perform better than those in control on the same non-incented test.

Parent Ratings of Impulsivity and Inhibition Predict State Testing Scores

One principle of cognitive development is that earlier intervention for educational difficulties tends to improve outcomes such as future educational and career success. One possible way to help students who struggle is to determine if they process information differently. Such determination might lead to clues for interventions. For example, early information processing requires attention before the information can be identified, encoded, and stored. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether parent ratings of inattention, inhibition, and impulsivity, and whether error rate on a reflexive attention task could be used to predict child scores on state standardized tests. Finding such an association could provide assistance to educators in identifying academically struggling children who might require targeted educational interventions. Children (N = 203) were invited to complete a peripheral cueing task (which measures the automatic reorienting of the brain’s attentional resources from one location to another). While the children completed the task, their parents completed a questionnaire. The questionnaire gathered information on broad indicators of child functioning, including observable behaviors of impulsivity, inattention, and inhibition, as well as state academic scores (which the parent retrieved online from their school). We used sequential regression to analyze contributions of error rate and parent-rated behaviors in predicting six academic scores. In one of the six analyses (for science), we found that the improvement was significant from the simplified model (with only family income, child age, and sex as predictors) to the full model (adding error rate and three parent-rated behaviors). Two additional analyses (reading and social studies) showed near significant improvement from simplified to full models. Parent-rated behaviors were significant predictors in all three of these analyses. In the reading score analysis, error rate showed a trend for significance as a predictor. In the analyses for math, language arts, and the overall academic score (created using principal component analysis), the simplified model best predicted academic outcomes.

Aggregated Randomly Generated Math Curriculum–Based Measurements for Middle School Students: Reliability, Predictive Validity, and Cut Score Precision

Approximately, 283 sixth-grade students completed four randomly generated Math Curriculum–Based Measures (M-CBMs) from interventioncentral.org twice during a fall semester. These M-CBMs measured foundational skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. We found that using mean fluency or accuracy scores from four M-CBMs produced more reliable test–retest estimates (e.g., r = .86–.88) in comparison with using individual scores (e.g., r = .55–.73). We also found that aggregated (mean or median) and individual M-CBM scores were strongly correlated (e.g., r = .82–.85) with the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test (PACT) math section, an annual state standardized test. However, only aggregated M-CBMs produced efficient cut scores useful in detecting students who would pass or fail the PACT.