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Recent highlights from IEA in our October 2020 email newsletter.

Released annually at IEA's General Assembly meeting, our IEA Insider publication contains highlights about IEA studies, national and international projects, services, publications, organizational updates and more!

IEA Research for Education Volume 10 reviews the development of the quality control mechanisms and methodologies associated with IEA’s extensive program of educational research. A group of renowned international researchers, directly involved in the design and execution of IEA’s international large-scale assessments (ILSAs), describe the operational and quality control procedures that are employed to address the challenges associated with providing high-quality, comparable data.

International large-scale assessments (ILSAs) are one of the most important tools policymakers and other educational stakeholders have to inform evidence based decision making for educational reform. Despite this, and the widespread use of ILSA data, results are sometimes misunderstood or misinterpreted. Here, we offer a brief guide to ILSAs and illuminate some of the important differences and commonalities within and across studies, limitations, and why they remain one of our most significant tools for education evaluation and reform. We focus on and compare the key studies, approaches, and structure of our own organization, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), with other ILSAs.