We present results demonstrating similar distributions of student scores, and statistically indistinguishable gains on two popular research-based assessment tools: the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment (BEMA) and the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism(CSEM). To deepen our understanding of student learning in our course environment and of these assessment tools as measures o...

This paper measures the effects of decentralizing educational responsibility to communities and schools on student outcomes. Using the example of El Salvador’s Community-Managed Schools Program (or, EDUCO, from the Spanish acronym, Educacion con Participacion de la Comunidad), which was designed to expand rural education rapidly following a civil war, it compares student achievement on standard...

Pre-tests are a non-graded assessment tool used to determine pre-existing subject knowledge. Typically pre-tests are administered prior to a course to determine knowledge baseline, but here they are used to test students prior to topical material coverage throughout the course. While counterintuitive, the pre-tests cover material the student is not expected to know, but serve as a motivational ...

An encompassing model of a business loan contract with the bank is constructed to establish the roles and relative importance of asymmetry of information, market power, borrower (entrepreneurial) effort and quality in explaining contract features. Special cases of the model include symmetric versus asymmetric information regimes, competition versus monopoly power, adverse selection versus moral...

“Every Catholic Child in a Catholic School”: Historical Resistance to State Schooling, Contemporary Private Competition, and Student Achievement across Countries Nineteenth-Century Catholic doctrine strongly opposed state schooling. We show that countries with larger shares of Catholics in 1900 (but without a Catholic state religion) tend to have larger shares of privately operated schools even...

The aim of this study was to examine whether student achievement and school location may influence a range of homework management strategies. The participants were 633 rural and urban students in Grade 8. These homework management strategies include: (a) setting an appropriate work environment, (b) managing time, (c) handling distraction, (d) monitoring motivation, and (e) controlling negative ...

The dynamic and on-going process of developing a state-of-the-art student record information system by a consortium of six Finnish universities is both described and analyzed. Using a social process model as the basic framework to describe the development, the

New forms of governing and managing public schools have proliferated in recent years, spawning the establishment and growth of companies that operate public schools under contract. Among these education management organizations, or EMOs, the largest and most visible is Edison Schools, Inc. In 2004–2005, Edison managed 103 public schools in 18 states and the District of Columbia, serving approxi...

This article reviews recent developments in the US and UK in response to rising foreclosures, with an emphasis on the provision of advice or counseling to borrowers in mortgage default. Both nations have increased support for counseling programs despite the lack of evidence that counseling is effective. Based on a quantitative study in the US and a qualitative study in the UK, this article prov...

Nurse practitioners working on college campuses are vital to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of depression. Every year, untreated depression results in school failure, social isolation, promiscuity, self-medication with drugs and alcohol, and suicide. On a college campus, collaboration between the student health clinic and the counseling center is an optimal approach to preventive coun...