

This study investigates the impact of a teacher professional development (PD) program in rural Rwanda, part of a randomized controlled trial of Save the Children’s early literacy intervention, “Literacy Boost.”
By: Angela Johnson, Catherine Galloway, Elliot Friedlander, Claude Goldenberg
Topics: Empowering educators, Early learning, Reading & language arts


In this study, repeated measures of math achievement and self-efficacy are used to fit a variety of latent curve models that jointly estimate growth in both constructs.
By: James Soland
Topics: Student growth & accountability policies, Growth modeling, Social-emotional learning


Summer credit recovery impact on newcomer English Learners
This article investigates the efficacy of a summer credit recovery program aimed at expanding high school newcomer ELs’ access to academic subjects.
By: Angela Johnson
Topics: English Language Learners, College & career readiness


The (non)impact of differential test taker engagement on aggregated scores
Disengaged test taking tends to be most prevalent with low-stakes tests. This has led to questions about the validity of aggregated scores from large-scale international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS, as previous research has found a meaningful correlation between the mean engagement and mean performance of countries.
By: Steven Wise, James Soland, Yuanchao Bo


An information-based approach to identifying rapid-guessing thresholds
Although several common threshold methods are based on rapid guessing response accuracy or visual inspection of response time distributions, this paper describes a new information-based approach to setting thresholds that does not share the limitations of other methods.
By: Steven Wise


The emerging science of test-taking disengagement
Student performance on standardized tests reflects more than just mastery of the material.
By: Steven Wise
Topics: Measurement & scaling, Innovations in reporting & assessment, School & test engagement


Can item response times provide insight into students’ motivation and self-efficacy in math
What can we glean about students’ social-emotional learning from how long they spend on math test questions? New research shows promise and limitations of using response time metadata to measure SEL.
By: James Soland
Topics: School & test engagement, Math & STEM, Social-emotional learning