Health and Academic Achievement

Health and Academic Achievement
Author: Blandina Bernal-Morales
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2018-09-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1789237300

Emotional, physical and social well-being describe human health from birth. Good health goes hand in hand with the ability to handle stress for the future. However, biological factors such as diet, life experiences such as drug abuse, bullying, burnout and social factors such as family and community support at the school stage tend to mold health problems, affecting academic achievements. This book is a compilation of current scientific information about the challenges that students, families and teachers face regarding health and academic achievements. Contributions also relate to how physical activity, psychosocial support and other interventions can be made to understand resilience and vulnerability to school desertion. This book will be of interest to readers from broad professional fields, non-specialist readers, and those involved in education policy.

Methodological Advances in Cross-National Surveys of Educational Achievement

Methodological Advances in Cross-National Surveys of Educational Achievement
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2002-06-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309083338

In November 2000, the Board on International Comparative Studies in Education (BICSE) held a symposium to draw on the wealth of experience gathered over a four-decade period, to evaluate improvement in the quality of the methodologies used in international studies, and to identify the most pressing methodological issues that remain to be solved. Since 1960, the United States has participated in 15 large-scale cross-national education surveys. The most assessed subjects have been science and mathematics through reading comprehension, geography, nonverbal reasoning, literature, French, English as a foreign language, civic education, history, computers in education, primary education, and second-language acquisition. The papers prepared for this symposium and discussions of those papers make up the volume, representing the most up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of methodological strengths and weaknesses of international comparative studies of student achievement. These papers answer the following questions: (1) What is the methodological quality of the most recent international surveys of student achievement? How authoritative are the results? (2) Has the methodological quality of international achievement studies improved over the past 40 years? and (3) What are promising opportunities for future improvement?

Implementing a National Assessment of Educational Achievement

Implementing a National Assessment of Educational Achievement
Author: Vincent Greaney
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2012
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0821385895

Implementation of a National Assessment of Educational Achievement focuses on the practical tasks involved in running a large-scale national assessment program. It has four parts. Part I provides an overview of the tasks involved - how the essential activities of an assessment are organized and implemented, the personnel and resources that are required, and the tasks that follow the collection of data. In Part II, a methodology for selecting a sample of students that will be representative of students in the education system is presented. Principles underlying sampling are described, as well as step-by-step procedures that can be implemented in nearly any national assessment. An accompanying CD contains supporting data files. Part III describes procedures for cleaning and managing data collected in a national assessment, essential elements of a quality assurance process. It also describes how to export and import data, that is, make data available in a format that is appropriate for users of statistical software such as Access, SPSS, WesVar, and Excel. The primary objective of this section is to enable the national assessment team develop and implement a systematic set of procedures to help ensure that the assessment data are accurate and reliable. Following sampling, test administration, data entry, and cleaning, the next step is to prepare data for analysis. In Part IV, a series of important pre-analysis steps, including producing estimates, computing and using survey weights, and computing estimates are described. The section dealing with the computation of estimates describes how they and their sampling errors are computed from simple and complex samples. Finally, a range of special topics, including nonresponse and issues relating to over-and under-size schools, is addressed.

Academic Achievement in a National Sample

Academic Achievement in a National Sample
Author: Hefer Bembenutty
Publisher:
Total Pages: 12
Release: 2005
Genre:
ISBN:

This study examined the predictive association between gender, ethnicity, and homework parental involvement, self-regulated learning processes, and motivational beliefs among 10th grade high school students. It was predicted that students' motivational beliefs and self-regulatory processes would be significant predictors of students' math academic achievement beyond and above homework parental involvement, gender, and ethnicity of the students. A regression analysis revealed that motivational beliefs and use of self-regulated learning strategies are significant predictors of math standardized test scores beyond and above parental active and reactive homework involvement and the students' gender and ethnic differences. Students who engage in self-regulation are better able to perform on the math standardized test. Implications for instruction are also discussed. (Contains 3 tables.).

Accelerating Academic Achievement

Accelerating Academic Achievement
Author: Ina V. S. Mullis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 84
Release: 1990
Genre: Academic achievement
ISBN:

Data from 20 years (1970-90) of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are summarized. The NAEP represents the nation's only ongoing assessment of the academic achievement of American students. Its assessments of educational achievement of students in grades 4, 8, and 12 are presented as "The Nation's Report Card". Chapter 1 of this report contains information about the students' competency in subject matter across the curriculum and their ability to use their minds well. Chapters 2 and 3 include information about the trends across time related to the performance of elementary school, middle school, and secondary school students in higher-order reasoning, problem solving, and communication skills as well as information about the academic achievement of minority students. Chapter 4 summarizes information about background variables related to education. In general, the data indicate that the educational performance of U.S. students is low and not improving. It is estimated that more than half of the nation's elementary through high school students are unable to demonstrate competency in challenging subject matter in English, mathematics, science, history, and geography. Fewer than half of all U.S. students appear to be able to use their minds well. Although considerable progress has been made in closing the performance gaps among different racial/ethnic and gender groups, the gaps still remain too large to meet the nation's objective of close parallels between the performance of minority students and the student population as a whole. Much that research has identified as effective in improving education is still not being implemented in the nation's schools. Nineteen tables and five figures summarize NAEP data. (SLD)

Setting Consensus Goals for Academic Achievement

Setting Consensus Goals for Academic Achievement
Author: James Pellegrino
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2014-10-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135065136

This special issue is based on a workshop which began with a description and examination of the current National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) standard-setting model, then looked to standard-setting applications outside of education. These applications included those that focus on human performance and the adequacy of human performance; in these contexts, raters were asked to focus on the knowledge and skills that underlie competent performance. Researchers also examined applications that focus on the impact of environmental agents on life and the ecology; in these cases, raters began with the knowledge that more (or less) of a substance is better and, as for NAEP, the judgment task was to determine "how good is good enough." They wished to examine parallels in the objectives, empirical grounding, judgmental requirements, and policy tensions for standard setting in NAEP and in other domains. These papers were commissioned to examine the current state of affairs and residual issues with respect to achievement-level setting in NAEP and to help determine whether the models and methods used in other disciplines have useful application to education. It is important to note that the papers represent the authors' views, not necessarily those of the committee or National Research Council. This issue and the workshop discussion point out a number of analogies between the objectives, requisite data, judgment requirements and policy issues for NAEP and other applications. The editors hope that this issue and wide distribution of these papers will prompt others to join in this interesting analysis and debate.

Using the Results of a National Assessment of Educational Achievement

Using the Results of a National Assessment of Educational Achievement
Author: Thomas Kellaghan
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2009
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0821379666

What are students learning? Throughout the world, governments striving to improve educational quality are turning to national assessments to provide this much-needed information in key curriculum areas. The capacity for carrying out national assessments has grown remarkably in recent years, but it has not been matched by widespread use of their findings. This book seeks to maximize an appreciation for the value of such data and to assist countries in exploiting the knowledge that national assessments yield. Using the Results of a National Assessment of Educational Achievement identifies the main factors affecting the use of national assessment findings. These include the political context in which an assessment is carried out, the nature of the assessment (census based or sample based), the assignment of accountability for the results, and the quality of assessment instruments. The book describes the type of information that the main report of a national assessment should contain, as well as other means of communicating findings to technical and nontechnical audiences. It outlines general considerations in translating national assessment results into policy and action, and examines specific procedures for using the data in policy making, educational management, teaching, and promoting public awareness. The topics addressed in this volume should be of interest to policy makers, educators, researchers, and development practitioners.

Grading the Nation's Report Card

Grading the Nation's Report Card
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2000-03-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309172322

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the nation's report card, has chronicled students' academic achievement in America for over a quarter of a century. It has been a valued source of information about students' performance, providing the best available trend data on the academic achievement of elementary, middle, and secondary school students in key subject areas. NAEP's prominence and the important need for stable and accurate measures of academic achievement call for evaluation of the program and an analysis of the extent to which its results are reasonable, valid, and informative to the public. This volume of papers considers the use and application of NAEP. It provides technical background to the recently published book, Grading the Nation's Report Card: Evaluating NAEP and Transforming the Assessment of Educational Progress (NRC, 1999), with papers on four key topics: NAEP's assessment development, content validity, design and use, and more broadly, the design of education indicator systems.

The Education Gap

The Education Gap
Author: William G. Howell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2006-02-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780815736868

The voucher debate has been both intense and ideologically polarizing, in good part because so little is known about how voucher programs operate in practice. In The Education Gap, William Howell and Paul Peterson report new findings drawn from the most comprehensive study on vouchers conducted to date. Added to the paperback edition of this groundbreaking volume are the authors' insights into the latest school choice developments in American education, including new voucher initiatives, charter school expansion, and public-school choice under No Child Left Behind. The authors review the significance of state and federal court decisions as well as recent scholarly debates over choice impacts on student performance. In addition, the authors present new findings on which parents choose private schools and the consequences the decision has for their children's education. Updated and expanded, The Education Gap remains an indispensable source of original research on school vouchers. "This is the most important book ever written on the subject of vouchers."—John E. Brandl, dean, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota "The Education Gap will provide an important intellectual battleground for the debate over vouchers for years to come."—Alan B. Krueger, Princeton University "Must reading for anyone interested in the battle over vouchers in America."—John Witte, University of Wisconsin