End of Course Exams

This paper describes the role end of course exams can play in the standards based reform movement.

The goal of this paper is to estimate the extent to which there is differential attrition based on teachers' value-added to student achievement.

This paper examines New York City elementary school teachers’ decisions to stay in the same school, transfer to another school in the district, transfer to another district, or leave teaching in New York state during the first five years of their careers.

By estimating the effect of teacher attributes using a value-added model, the analyses in this paper predict that observable qualifications of teachers resulted in average improved achievement for students in the poorest decile of schools of .03 standard deviations.

In recent years the number of states that have adopted or plan to implement end of course (EOC) tests as part of their high school assessment program has grown rapidly. While EOC tests certainly offer great promise, they are not without challenges. Many of the proposed uses of EOC tests open new and often complex issues related to design and implementation. The purpose of this brief is to support education leaders and policy makers in making appropriate technical and operational decisions to maximize the benefit of EOC tests and address the challenges.

This book divides itself naturally into two parts. The first part has to do with the situation in which Superintendent Brooks found himself, with his successful campaign in educating his teachers to use standardized tests, with the results which he obtained, with the way he used these results to grade his pupils, to rate his teachers, and to evaluate methods of teaching, and finally with the use he made of intelligence tests.

This paper reviews the use of exit exams across the states and identifies challenges in implementation of these exams and what we know about the effects of them.

This systematic review synthesizes the findings from 30 studies thatcompared the performance of students at schools using single‐trackyear‐round calendars to the performance of students at schools usinga traditional calendar.

This study examines that assumption, asking the question:  how well do student grades correlate with test scores, school demographics, student performance on college entrance exams, and the historical difficulty for getting A’s (is it easier or harder to get A’s).  The study found that students who scored higher on end-of-course (EOC) examinations also had higher grades.  However having high grades did not correlate with doing well on the examination.  

This paper provides direct evidence about the impacts of school job matching on productivity and student achievement.

The authors study the effects of various types of education and training on the ability of teachers to promote student achievement.

This study examines the relationship between two dominant measures of teacher quality, teacher qualification and teacher effectiveness (measured by value-added modeling), in terms of their influence on students’ short-term academic growth and long-term educational success (measured by bachelor’s degree attainment).

Using a randomized control trial in 11 Chinese primary schools, we studied the effects of pay-for-grades programs on academic cheating. We randomly assigned 82 classrooms into treatment or control conditions, and used a statistical algorithm to determine the occurrence of cheating. 

This study evaluated the effect data from end of course exams had on teacher practices in history instruction.  In general, the teachers supported the changes but were reluctant to change their instructional practices.

This study evaluated the effects of high stakes test such as end of course exams at the level of a school district.  Across the six states included in the study  the effects were mixed.  In general the more developed the system was the better the effects but this was not always the case.

There is increased interest in extending the test-based evaluation framework in K-12 education to achievement in high school. High school achievement is typically measured by performance on end-of-course exams (EOCs), which test course-specific standards in subjects including algebra, biology, English, geometry, and history, among others. Recent research indicates that when students take particular courses can have important consequences for achievement and subsequent outcomes. The contribution of the present study is to develop an approach for modeling EOC test performance regarding the timing of course.

The focus of the report is on the performance of U.S. students relative to their peers in other countries on TIMSS and TIMSS Advanced 2015, and, for TIMSS results, on changes in achievement since 2011 and 1995. This report also describes the characteristics of students who participated in the advanced mathematics and physics assessments at the end of high school, and describes the performance of males and females in these subjects. In addition, it includes achievement in Florida, and international benchmarks to provide a way to interpret the scale scores by describing the types of knowledge and skills students demonstrate at different levels along the TIMSS scale. 

This research considers relationships between student achievement (knowledge and cognitive skill), teacher efficacy (Gibson & Dembo, 1984), and interactions with assigned coaches (self-report measures) in a sample of 18 grade 7 and 8 history teachers in 36 classes implementing a specific innovation with the help of 6 coaches.

Effective ongoing assessment, referred to in the education literature as formative assessment or progress monitoring, is indispensable in promoting teacher and student success. Feedback through formative assessment is ranked at or near the top of practices known to significantly raise student achievement. For decades, formative assessment has been found to be effective in clinical settings and, more important, in typical classroom settings. Formative assessment produces substantial results at a cost significantly below that of other popular school reform initiatives such as smaller class size, charter schools, accountability, and school vouchers. It also serves as a practical diagnostic tool available to all teachers. A core component of formal and informal assessment procedures, formative assessment allows teachers to quickly determine if individual students are progressing at acceptable rates and provides insight into where and how to modify and adapt lessons, with the goal of making sure that students do not fall behind.

This paper examines the use of high stakes testing such as end of course exams in American education.  The conclusions are that the exams do not produce substantive changes in instructional practices and the information is useful to measure school and system progress but has limited utility for instructional guidance.

This report updates the status of high school exit exams nationally.  The number of states using end of course exams as part of accountability measures has become more common and data suggest the trend will continue.

This report provides information on states that require students enrolled in courses that have an end-of-course (EOC) exam to take the EOC