Important educational policy decisions, like whether to shorten or extend the school year, often assume that growth in achievement is linear through the school year.  This research examines this untested assumption using data from seven million students in kindergarten through 8th grade across the fall, winter, and spring of the 2016-17 school year.

In this study, we conducted empirical and simulation analyses in which we scored surveys using item response theory (IRT) models that do and do not account for response styles, and then used those different scores in growth models and compared results.

This paper contributes novel causal evidence for the impacts of kindergarten entry age on academic growth in the first three years of school.

Through a series of simulation and empirical studies, we produce scores in a single-cohort repeated measure design using sum scores as well as multiple IRT approaches and compare the recovery of growth estimates from longitudinal growth models using each set of scores.

Do students’ social-emotional learning (SEL) skills in middle school predict being off-track to graduate high school?

This study investigated the violation of local independence assumptions within unidimensional item response theory (IRT) models.

Schools are increasingly held accountable for their contributions to students’ academic growth in math and reading. Under The Every Student Succeeds Act, most states are estimating how much schools improve student achievement over time and using those growth metrics to identify the bottom 5% of schools for remediation.