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We study the effect of preferences for boys on the performance in mathematics of girls, using evidence from two different data sources. In our first set of results, we identify families with a preference for boys by using fertility stopping rules in a large population of households whose children attend public schools in Florida. Girls growing up in a boy-biased family score on average 3 percentage points lower on math exams when compared to girls raised in other types of families. In our second set of results we find similar strong effects when we study the correlations between girls' performance in mathematics and maternal gender role attitudes, using evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We conclude that socialization at home can explain a non-trivial part of the observed gender disparities in mathematics performance and document that maternal gender attitudes correlate with those of their children. [The Florida Department of Education and Health provided the linked population-level administrative data that permitted this analysis to take place.]

Spatial visualization--the ability to mentally imagine and manipulate objects--has frequently been measured using the Paper Folding Test (PFT). In this task, participants view diagrams of a paper being folded and a hole being punched. They then identify the resulting punch pattern. Although task instructions promote mentally unfolding the paper, the extent to which people follow this spatial visualization strategy is unknown. The present work assesses hypothesized PFT solution strategies and their relation to problem attributes. Accuracy was impacted by the interaction between fold types, linear mixed models revealed greater use of simple heuristics compared to the suggested unfolding. Furthermore, most participants used a single strategy but simple heuristics were more often used than unfolding. Given this, we recommend redesigning the PFT to utilize the prevalence of strategy use to assess individual differences. [This is the in press version of an article published in "Personality and Individual Differences" (ISSN 0191-8869).]

This paper studies how rewards based on class rank affect student effort and performance using a game-theoretic classroom competition model and data from the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees in the US. The paper finds that variation in the presence of strong or weak students changes the incentives and test scores of incumbent students depending on their ability group in accord with the competition model, with increases in the number of strong students lowering effort among strong and weak incumbents but raising the test scores of weak incumbents. The results suggest that competition induced by rank-based rewards within homogeneous ability groups lowers overall effort levels, while the presence of strong students directly augments the performance, but not the effort levels, of weak students despite the competition. The paper also rules out a number of alternative explanations for these school composition effects, including disruptions, teacher-initiated changes in curriculum in response to changing class composition, selective incumbent-student school exit, and endogenous responses of refugee location choices to school performance. [This report was funded by the China National Natural Science Foundation.]

The rise of the accountability movement in education has resulted in the proliferation of school report cards, school ratings and rankings, and other kinds of performance reporting for public consumption and policy use. To understand the strengths and limitations of school rating systems and the role they play in shaping public perceptions and school improvement practices, this paper situates rating systems within the broader field of comparative organizational assessments and neo-institutional theory; describes school rankings and rating systems in use by states and consumer-oriented enterprises; and details four aspects of school ratings (measurement, transformation, integration, and presentation) that affect their use and interpretation.

The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) and Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program grants have encouraged and supported grantees to develop coherent and comprehensive human capital management systems (HCMS). The goal of such systems is to recruit, select, place, induct, develop, pay, and retain educators with the competencies they need to realize the organization's vision of instructional improvement. In a coherent and comprehensive system, the human capital management (HCM) practices are aligned so that they work together to attract, develop, motivate, and retain educators with the needed competencies. This brief focuses on tools developed by three TIF grantees to help the districts and schools participating in their projects assess and improve the alignment of their HCMS. While the argument for alignment can be compelling, achieving it can be daunting. When confronted with the need to consider the whole set of policies and practices that affect recruiting, placing, inducting, developing, evaluating, compensating, promoting, and retaining educators, it is hard to know where to start. Each of the grantees featured in this brief faced the challenge of working with districts or schools unfamiliar with the concept of alignment. Many partner districts had given little recent attention to their HCM practices. Each of the grantees leveraged TIF technical assistance to develop their tools, but since each also served multiple partners at different stages of HCMS development, the tools take different forms and emphasize somewhat different HCM practices. Overall, the tools should provide states, districts, and schools interested in examining the alignment of their HCMS with examples and ideas for developing their own tools.

Many organizations use dashboards to monitor and analyze important performance measures. Data dashboards present the most important information (sometimes called key performance indicators, or KPIs) about processes and outcomes in a concise, easy-to-digest format. Dashboards get their name from the clusters of instruments and gauges drivers use to monitor the behavior of their cars. As educational organizations invest in more comprehensive human capital management systems (HCMSs), they must track the implementation and effectiveness of these systems in order to realize their full benefits. A human capital management (HCM) dashboard provides a visual representation of the implementation and effectiveness of HCM processes related to recruiting, hiring, developing, and retaining effective educators. Such a dashboard can be used to track and monitor progress toward achieving HCM goals. This brief, which provides an overview of the development of HCMS dashboards, first describes some of the work that the U.S. Department of Education and Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) districts have done to develop dashboards. It then presents an example of a comprehensive strategic dashboard and an example of metrics for a dashboard that focuses specifically on teacher recruitment. It concludes with a summary of 12 steps to consider in developing dashboards and a list of resources for developing HCM performance indicators that could be presented on a dashboard.

No state has done more than Tennessee to shift state higher education funding to reflect outcomes rather than inputs. In other states, most of the core funding for higher education, including tuition and state appropriations, flows to colleges based on student enrollment. With a goal to reach the national average in higher education attainment by 2025, Tennessee is at the vanguard of this movement and has aligned its budget with its ambitions. It is the first state to base most state appropriations to colleges and universities on outcomes, with emphasis on progress toward and completion of degrees. Initial results are promising, but still preliminary. Evidence of success will come from information on: (1) degrees awarded; (2) enrollment; (3) grades and credits earned; and (4) progress and other performance benchmarks. Recommendations for other states that emerge from initial findings are included. This brief's appendix table shows how data will become available over the next several years to facilitate review of the impact of formula funding in Tennessee.

Performance-based funding is a resource distribution strategy used in education to reward service providers for the outcomes they achieve. Institutions that produce above-average results earn additional financing, while those that fall short may face funding reductions and may be targeted for technical assistance to address their performance shortcomings. Efforts to introduce performance-based funding in education frequently encounter resistance from program administrators and their staff, who, among other objections, fear the application of competitive funding may unfairly penalize programs serving low-performing students. This paper describes how performance-based funding systems can be incorporated into state education resource distribution formulas to incentivize improvements in educational services, and presents a seven-step process that RTI has developed to build stakeholder support for system adoption. It draws on RTI's years of experience working with state education administrators to create funding formulas that allocate federal and state funds--equitably and objectively--to the most effective service providers.

This paper is a report on a study of the effect of charter schools on both students attending them and students in neighboring public schools in Michigan. Using school-level data from Michigan's standardized testing program, the study compared changes in tests scores between charter and public school students. The data included annual math and reading tests for 4th- and 7th-graders, science and writing tests for 5th- and 8th-graders, and a high school proficiency exam for 11th-graders. The paper begins by evaluating the effects of Michigan charter schools on students attending them. The results suggest that charter schools did not have strong effects on the academic achievement of students attending them. The paper then looks at the effects of Michigan charter schools on neighboring public schools. The study used exogenous variation created by Michigan's charter law to identify the effects. The results suggest that charter schools have had little or no effect on test scores in neighboring public schools. (Contains 9 tables of analyzed data and 19 references.) (Author/WFA)

This paper is a report of a study that investigated whether increased private-school competition results in enhanced performance of public schools. Data for the study came from a pooled data set from Georgia Department of Education documents and directories, which included socioeconomic data on students and test scores from Georgia school systems between 1980 and 1990 for 3rd-grade and 10th-grade reading and math tests. The data allowed researchers to address directly the problem of endogeneity. Following an introduction, the report presents a framework of how private competition can affect public-school performance and investigates the conditions for a beneficial competitive effect. The next section explains the empirical models and details the data used in the analysis. The next section presents the empirical results. The empirical results do not lend support to the hypothesis that private-school competition improves public-school performance, as measured by student-exam results. Supplementing the text are five tables that detail test scores and socioeconomic data. (Contains 23 references.) (WFA)

Since the approval of the No Child Left Behind Act, there have been new ways of evaluating student success. Evaluation is based on progress or improvement, not only on achievement. This report describes a study that examined student progress, or sustained improvement, in California over a 2-year period (1999-2000). In analyzing sustained improvement, the study looked at California Academic Performance Index scores in low-performing schools. The study took into account demographic and school-level variables known to relate strongly to student achievement. The report explores three issues: (1) how to conceptualize and measure sustained improvement in California public schools; (2) how the way sustained improvement is conceptualized affects schools that exhibit sustained improvement; and (3) how well predictors of student achievement relate to sustained improvement measures. The study found that the variables most commonly associated with achievement test scores were not particularly helpful in explaining sustained improvement. Social and demographic measures were not predictive of sustained improvement. Also, a potential influence on sustained improvement could be school-district support. Finally, conceptualizing and measuring sustained improvement can be approached in a variety of ways, and further research is warranted. (Contains 9 tables and 11 references.) (WFA)

The purpose of this essay is to explore both what is known and what needs to be learned about the information value of performance items "when they are used in large scale assessments." Within the context of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), there is substantial motivation for answering these questions. Over the past decade, in order to adequately portray the breadth and depth of important curriculum standards, NAEP designers have invested substantial time and energy in creating extended constructed-response items and enormous financial resources in scoring these items. While these items are popular with curriculum experts within various content areas (Linn, Glaser, & Bohrnstedt, 1997), it is not clear whether they possess the marginal utility required to justify their cost; that is, they may not provide new information above and beyond that which is provided by a more standard mix of multiple-choice and short items with known measurement characteristics and much more economical scoring protocols. Even worse, there is some reason to believe, based on research in non-NAEP settings, that extended constructed-response items may provide negative returns in terms of the overall goal of accurate measurement of performance on some broad domain such as reading, mathematics, or science (see Forsyth, Hambleton, Linn, Mislevy, and Yen, 1996). To investigate this claim, the authors traversed the "information value" terrain along as many paths as they could find--combing the measurement literature to determine the various ways in which scholars have conceptualized and operationalized the "information value" construct, reviewing research conducted within those approaches, consulting essays that emphasize the importance of strong conceptual grounding in content frameworks, studying the broadest available construal of the construct of validity (e.g., Messick, 1989), and, finally, and most unsatisifyingly, attempting to determine, at a conceptual and philosophical level, what the assessment community means when they talk about the information provided by assessments. This essay is organized into four sections. First, the authors consider the construct of information value in its broadest philosophical sense and then describe the classical ways of operationalizing it. Second, they review the available literature within each of these operational traditions (IRT, factor analysis, correlational studies). Third, they consider some alternative versions of information value, based more on cognitive, conceptual, and pragmatic considerations. Finally, they outline a series of studies that they believe ought to be supported by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) in order to answer the question of how NAEP can be modified to increase its "information value."