"Once touted as the single best way to measure students from diverse backgrounds, schools, and experiences, standardized college admissions tests are now criticized for being hopelessly biased in favor of traditionally privileged groups. Out of this has emerged the test-optional movement that seeks to allow students to apply to schools without sitting through the rigors of the SAT. This book takes a step back and applies rigorous empirical measurements to these rival claims. Drawing upon the expertise of higher education researchers, admissions officers, enrollment managers, and policy professionals, this edited volume is among the first to investigate the research and policy implications of test-optional practices. It was conceived in response to the editors' frustration with the fragmented and incomplete state of the literature around the contemporary debate on college admissions testing. Many students, teachers, parents, policymakers--frankly, nearly anyone immediately outside the testing industry and college admissions--have little understanding of how admissions tests are used. This lack of transparency has often fueled beliefs that college assessments are biased, misused, or overused. Decades of research on various aspects of testing, such as the predictive validity of assessments, makes a compelling case for their value. But all-too-frequently researchers and admissions officers talk past one another instead of engaging substantively. This collection intends to remedy the situation by bringing these disparate voices together. This book is designed for provosts, enrollment managers, and college admissions officers seeking to strike the proper balance between uniformity and fairness"--

Value-added methods refer to efforts to estimate the relative contributions of specific teachers, schools, or programs to student test performance. In recent years, these methods have attracted considerable attention because of their potential applicability for educational accountability, teacher pay-for-performance systems, school and teacher improvement, program evaluation, and research. Value-added methods involve complex statistical models applied to test data of varying quality. Accordingly, there are many technical challenges to ascertaining the degree to which the output of these models provides the desired estimates. Despite a substantial amount of research over the last decade and a half, overcoming these challenges has proven to be very difficult, and many questions remain unanswered-at a time when there is strong interest in implementing value-added models in a variety of settings. The National Research Council and the National Academy of Education held a workshop, summarized in this volume, to help identify areas of emerging consensus and areas of disagreement regarding appropriate uses of value-added methods, in an effort to provide research-based guidance to policy makers who are facing decisions about whether to proceed in this direction.

Measuring innovation in education and understanding how it works is essential to improve the quality of the education sector. Monitoring systematically how pedagogical practices evolve would considerably increase the international education knowledge base. We need to examine whether, and how ...

How do you judge the quality of a school, a district, a teacher, a student? By the test scores, of course. Yet for all the talk, what educational tests can and can’t tell you, and how scores can be misunderstood and misused, remains a mystery to most. The complexities of testing are routinely ignored, either because they are unrecognized, or because they may be—well, complicated. Inspired by a popular Harvard course for students without an extensive mathematics background, Measuring Up demystifies educational testing—from MCAS to SAT to WAIS, with all the alphabet soup in between. Bringing statistical terms down to earth, Daniel Koretz takes readers through the most fundamental issues that arise in educational testing and shows how they apply to some of the most controversial issues in education today, from high-stakes testing to special education. He walks readers through everyday examples to show what tests do well, what their limits are, how easily tests and scores can be oversold or misunderstood, and how they can be used sensibly to help discover how much kids have learned.

This book introduces and explores major topics in contemporary educational measurement: criterion-referenced testing, item response theory (IRT), computer-based testing, cross-lingual and cross-cultural assessment, and accountability testing. Psychometric experts describe forward-looking measurement practices and provide a contextualized understanding of how and why they were developed, how they can be used, and where they may go in the future. In addition to presenting key concepts and formulas, the volume covers established and emerging applications and discusses recurrent challenges that require additional research. A helpful glossary of abbreviations is included. The book is grounded in the work of Ronald K. Hambleton.

Measuring and Enhancing the Student Experience provides insights on how student experience measures could be used to inform improvements at institutional, course, unit of study and teacher level. The book is based on a decade of research and practitioner views on ways to enhance the design, conduct, analysis, reporting and closing the loop on student feedback data. While the book is largely based on Australian case studies, it provides learning experiences for other countries where student experience measures are used in national and institutional quality assurance. Consisting of 13 chapters, the book includes a wide range of topics including the role and purpose of student feedback, the use of student feedback in staff performance reviews, staff and student engagement, a student feedback and experience framework, the first year experience, use of qualitative data, engaging transnational students in feedback, closing the loop on feedback, student engagement in national quality assurance, use of learning analytics and the future of the student experience. Mahsood Shah is an Associate Professor and Deputy Dean (Learning and Teaching) with School of Business and Law at CQUniversity, Australia. In this role Mahsood is responsible for enhancing the academic quality and standard of courses. Mahsood is also responsible for learning and teaching strategy, governance, effective implementation of policies, and enhancement of learning and teaching outcomes across all campuses. In providing leadership for learning and teaching, Mahsood works with key academic leaders across all campuses to improve learning and teaching outcomes of courses delivered in various modes including face-to-face and online. At CQUniversity, he provides leadership in national and international accreditation of academic courses. Mahsood is also an active researcher. His areas of research include quality in higher education, measurement and enhancement of student experience, student retention and attrition, student engagement in quality assurance, international higher education, widening participation and private higher education. Chenicheri Sid Nair is the incoming Executive Director, Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), Mauritius. Prior to joining TEC, he was Professor, Higher Education Development at the University of Western Australia (UWA), Perth where his work encompassed the improvement of the institutions teaching and learning. Before this appointment to UWA, he was Quality Adviser (Research and Evaluation) in the Centre for Higher Education Quality (CHEQ) at Monash University, Australia. He has an extensive expertise in the area of quality development and evaluation, and he also has considerable editorial experience. Currently, he is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Quality Assurance in Engineering and Technology Education (IJQAETE). He was also a Managing Editor of the Electronic Journal of Science Education (EJSE). Professor Nair is also an international consultant in a number of countries in quality, student voice and evaluations. - Provides both practical experience and research findings - Presents a diverse range of topics, ranging from broader student experience issues, analysis of government policies in Australia on student experience, the changing context of student evaluations, nonresponse to surveys, staff and student engagement, ideal frameworks for student feedback, and more - Contains data taken from the unique Australian experience with changing government policies and reforms relevant to the Asia-Pacific region

Higher education is a linchpin of the American economy and society: teaching and research at colleges and universities contribute significantly to the nation's economic activity, both directly and through their impact on future growth; federal and state governments support teaching and research with billions of taxpayers' dollars; and individuals, communities, and the nation gain from the learning and innovation that occur in higher education. In the current environment of increasing tuition and shrinking public funds, a sense of urgency has emerged to better track the performance of colleges and universities in the hope that their costs can be contained without compromising quality or accessibility. Improving Measurement of Productivity in Higher Education presents an analytically well-defined concept of productivity in higher education and recommends empirically valid and operationally practical guidelines for measuring it. In addition to its obvious policy and research value, improved measures of productivity may generate insights that potentially lead to enhanced departmental, institutional, or system educational processes. Improving Measurement of Productivity in Higher Education constructs valid productivity measures to supplement the body of information used to guide resource allocation decisions at the system, state, and national levels and to assist policymakers who must assess investments in higher education against other compelling demands on scarce resources. By portraying the productive process in detail, this report will allow stakeholders to better understand the complexities of-and potential approaches to-measuring institution, system and national-level performance in higher education.

This report explores the association between school innovation and different measures related to educational objectives.